\n

Talk to us if you are wondering how Lean-Agile transformation can change Projects based organization? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

#ProjectToProduct, #ProductThinking, #OrganizeAroundValue, #ContinuousImprovement, #LongtermStableTeams<\/p>\n","post_title":"Lean-Agile in Projects Organization \u2013 is it oil in water?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"17570-2","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 13:08:07","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 13:08:07","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17570","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":2},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 2 of 2 1 2
\n

Once there is a long-term mindset, it enables Continuous Improvement<\/strong>, which is the next foundation element of Lean-Agile thinking. The teams will be able to develop a systematic understanding of the current state of performance indicators. They get time to carefully think of any improvements and can implement the same so that performance remains stable and also can improve. They can set standards and practices to ensure stability. It is difficult to imagine how this can happen in a temporary project setup where the key objective is to finish a project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Talk to us if you are wondering how Lean-Agile transformation can change Projects based organization? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

#ProjectToProduct, #ProductThinking, #OrganizeAroundValue, #ContinuousImprovement, #LongtermStableTeams<\/p>\n","post_title":"Lean-Agile in Projects Organization \u2013 is it oil in water?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"17570-2","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 13:08:07","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 13:08:07","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17570","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":2},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 2 of 2 1 2
\n

Continuous Improvement<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Once there is a long-term mindset, it enables Continuous Improvement<\/strong>, which is the next foundation element of Lean-Agile thinking. The teams will be able to develop a systematic understanding of the current state of performance indicators. They get time to carefully think of any improvements and can implement the same so that performance remains stable and also can improve. They can set standards and practices to ensure stability. It is difficult to imagine how this can happen in a temporary project setup where the key objective is to finish a project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Talk to us if you are wondering how Lean-Agile transformation can change Projects based organization? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

#ProjectToProduct, #ProductThinking, #OrganizeAroundValue, #ContinuousImprovement, #LongtermStableTeams<\/p>\n","post_title":"Lean-Agile in Projects Organization \u2013 is it oil in water?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"17570-2","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 13:08:07","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 13:08:07","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17570","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":2},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 2 of 2 1 2
\n

As part of Lean-Agile transformation,<\/strong> one of the foundation principles we convey is Product Thinking <\/strong>and Long-term Stable Teams.<\/strong> A department and in turn a larger organization should ideally be an aggregation of carefully designed teams each with a manageable size of members having requisite skills. Product thinking is about slices of customer value rather than set of project work<\/em><\/strong> packages. Product work gets assigned to teams as opposed to an individual getting assigned work. All work is then accomplished collectively by the members as one team<\/strong>. Product by nature lasts longer till it loses its utility value. So long-term stable teams and product thinking will allow members to be invested in their team identity, evolve team norms and practices and become high performing over a period of time. Customer value gets delivered over a longer period of time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continuous Improvement<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Once there is a long-term mindset, it enables Continuous Improvement<\/strong>, which is the next foundation element of Lean-Agile thinking. The teams will be able to develop a systematic understanding of the current state of performance indicators. They get time to carefully think of any improvements and can implement the same so that performance remains stable and also can improve. They can set standards and practices to ensure stability. It is difficult to imagine how this can happen in a temporary project setup where the key objective is to finish a project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Talk to us if you are wondering how Lean-Agile transformation can change Projects based organization? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

#ProjectToProduct, #ProductThinking, #OrganizeAroundValue, #ContinuousImprovement, #LongtermStableTeams<\/p>\n","post_title":"Lean-Agile in Projects Organization \u2013 is it oil in water?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"17570-2","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 13:08:07","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 13:08:07","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17570","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":2},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 2 of 2 1 2
\n

Transition from Project thinking to Product Thinking<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

As part of Lean-Agile transformation,<\/strong> one of the foundation principles we convey is Product Thinking <\/strong>and Long-term Stable Teams.<\/strong> A department and in turn a larger organization should ideally be an aggregation of carefully designed teams each with a manageable size of members having requisite skills. Product thinking is about slices of customer value rather than set of project work<\/em><\/strong> packages. Product work gets assigned to teams as opposed to an individual getting assigned work. All work is then accomplished collectively by the members as one team<\/strong>. Product by nature lasts longer till it loses its utility value. So long-term stable teams and product thinking will allow members to be invested in their team identity, evolve team norms and practices and become high performing over a period of time. Customer value gets delivered over a longer period of time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continuous Improvement<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Once there is a long-term mindset, it enables Continuous Improvement<\/strong>, which is the next foundation element of Lean-Agile thinking. The teams will be able to develop a systematic understanding of the current state of performance indicators. They get time to carefully think of any improvements and can implement the same so that performance remains stable and also can improve. They can set standards and practices to ensure stability. It is difficult to imagine how this can happen in a temporary project setup where the key objective is to finish a project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Talk to us if you are wondering how Lean-Agile transformation can change Projects based organization? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

#ProjectToProduct, #ProductThinking, #OrganizeAroundValue, #ContinuousImprovement, #LongtermStableTeams<\/p>\n","post_title":"Lean-Agile in Projects Organization \u2013 is it oil in water?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"17570-2","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 13:08:07","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 13:08:07","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17570","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":2},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 2 of 2 1 2
\n

Within most IT and R&D organization, people are used to being \u201cassigned\u201d to projects. Once they finish one a project, they move on to another. An engineer typically fills up a resume with major projects completed and contributions made. Strong project management practices have evolved to closely monitor individual tasks and resources (engineers and other materials). Project managers manage risks that could impact project completion and thereby its objectives. Funding is done for projects based on resources (both people and material). But, projects by definition are temporary in nature and this can drive thinking and decision making. Once Projects get closed most of the learnings too get wrapped up. So is there a better way to organize?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Transition from Project thinking to Product Thinking<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

As part of Lean-Agile transformation,<\/strong> one of the foundation principles we convey is Product Thinking <\/strong>and Long-term Stable Teams.<\/strong> A department and in turn a larger organization should ideally be an aggregation of carefully designed teams each with a manageable size of members having requisite skills. Product thinking is about slices of customer value rather than set of project work<\/em><\/strong> packages. Product work gets assigned to teams as opposed to an individual getting assigned work. All work is then accomplished collectively by the members as one team<\/strong>. Product by nature lasts longer till it loses its utility value. So long-term stable teams and product thinking will allow members to be invested in their team identity, evolve team norms and practices and become high performing over a period of time. Customer value gets delivered over a longer period of time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continuous Improvement<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Once there is a long-term mindset, it enables Continuous Improvement<\/strong>, which is the next foundation element of Lean-Agile thinking. The teams will be able to develop a systematic understanding of the current state of performance indicators. They get time to carefully think of any improvements and can implement the same so that performance remains stable and also can improve. They can set standards and practices to ensure stability. It is difficult to imagine how this can happen in a temporary project setup where the key objective is to finish a project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Talk to us if you are wondering how Lean-Agile transformation can change Projects based organization? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

#ProjectToProduct, #ProductThinking, #OrganizeAroundValue, #ContinuousImprovement, #LongtermStableTeams<\/p>\n","post_title":"Lean-Agile in Projects Organization \u2013 is it oil in water?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"17570-2","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 13:08:07","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 13:08:07","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17570","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":2},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 2 of 2 1 2
\n

Project approach is most common<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Within most IT and R&D organization, people are used to being \u201cassigned\u201d to projects. Once they finish one a project, they move on to another. An engineer typically fills up a resume with major projects completed and contributions made. Strong project management practices have evolved to closely monitor individual tasks and resources (engineers and other materials). Project managers manage risks that could impact project completion and thereby its objectives. Funding is done for projects based on resources (both people and material). But, projects by definition are temporary in nature and this can drive thinking and decision making. Once Projects get closed most of the learnings too get wrapped up. So is there a better way to organize?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Transition from Project thinking to Product Thinking<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

As part of Lean-Agile transformation,<\/strong> one of the foundation principles we convey is Product Thinking <\/strong>and Long-term Stable Teams.<\/strong> A department and in turn a larger organization should ideally be an aggregation of carefully designed teams each with a manageable size of members having requisite skills. Product thinking is about slices of customer value rather than set of project work<\/em><\/strong> packages. Product work gets assigned to teams as opposed to an individual getting assigned work. All work is then accomplished collectively by the members as one team<\/strong>. Product by nature lasts longer till it loses its utility value. So long-term stable teams and product thinking will allow members to be invested in their team identity, evolve team norms and practices and become high performing over a period of time. Customer value gets delivered over a longer period of time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continuous Improvement<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Once there is a long-term mindset, it enables Continuous Improvement<\/strong>, which is the next foundation element of Lean-Agile thinking. The teams will be able to develop a systematic understanding of the current state of performance indicators. They get time to carefully think of any improvements and can implement the same so that performance remains stable and also can improve. They can set standards and practices to ensure stability. It is difficult to imagine how this can happen in a temporary project setup where the key objective is to finish a project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Talk to us if you are wondering how Lean-Agile transformation can change Projects based organization? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

#ProjectToProduct, #ProductThinking, #OrganizeAroundValue, #ContinuousImprovement, #LongtermStableTeams<\/p>\n","post_title":"Lean-Agile in Projects Organization \u2013 is it oil in water?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"17570-2","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 13:08:07","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 13:08:07","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17570","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":2},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 2 of 2 1 2
\n

In the last couple of weeks, I had some long phone conversations with a few of my old buddies. I had not spoken to them in several months. The COVID situation was helping to connect with many through video calls rather than just messages on social media. One of them works for a large engineering services organization. Two others are in R&D organizations. One thing that struck me was everybody was referring to one project or the other they were working on (in their workplace of course). So you might ask \"so what is the issue?\"<\/em><\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Project approach is most common<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Within most IT and R&D organization, people are used to being \u201cassigned\u201d to projects. Once they finish one a project, they move on to another. An engineer typically fills up a resume with major projects completed and contributions made. Strong project management practices have evolved to closely monitor individual tasks and resources (engineers and other materials). Project managers manage risks that could impact project completion and thereby its objectives. Funding is done for projects based on resources (both people and material). But, projects by definition are temporary in nature and this can drive thinking and decision making. Once Projects get closed most of the learnings too get wrapped up. So is there a better way to organize?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Transition from Project thinking to Product Thinking<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

As part of Lean-Agile transformation,<\/strong> one of the foundation principles we convey is Product Thinking <\/strong>and Long-term Stable Teams.<\/strong> A department and in turn a larger organization should ideally be an aggregation of carefully designed teams each with a manageable size of members having requisite skills. Product thinking is about slices of customer value rather than set of project work<\/em><\/strong> packages. Product work gets assigned to teams as opposed to an individual getting assigned work. All work is then accomplished collectively by the members as one team<\/strong>. Product by nature lasts longer till it loses its utility value. So long-term stable teams and product thinking will allow members to be invested in their team identity, evolve team norms and practices and become high performing over a period of time. Customer value gets delivered over a longer period of time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continuous Improvement<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Once there is a long-term mindset, it enables Continuous Improvement<\/strong>, which is the next foundation element of Lean-Agile thinking. The teams will be able to develop a systematic understanding of the current state of performance indicators. They get time to carefully think of any improvements and can implement the same so that performance remains stable and also can improve. They can set standards and practices to ensure stability. It is difficult to imagine how this can happen in a temporary project setup where the key objective is to finish a project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Talk to us if you are wondering how Lean-Agile transformation can change Projects based organization? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

#ProjectToProduct, #ProductThinking, #OrganizeAroundValue, #ContinuousImprovement, #LongtermStableTeams<\/p>\n","post_title":"Lean-Agile in Projects Organization \u2013 is it oil in water?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"17570-2","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 13:08:07","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 13:08:07","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17570","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":2},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 2 of 2 1 2
\n

Then it is incumbent on leadership to continuously<\/strong> make investments on growing skills and knowledge <\/strong>and prune the eroding ones<\/strong>. At the same time, an individual has to embrace life-long learning to actively manage the portfolio. Some individuals might end up having a non-performing portfolio whereas some others may build a high-performing portfolio. A combined high-performing portfolio of Skills would benefit individuals, teams and organizations.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CAGR & Half-Life of Skills & Knowledge","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"cagr-half-life-of-skills-knowledge","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 12:41:21","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 12:41:21","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17980","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17570,"post_author":"10","post_date":"2020-11-23 18:23:20","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-23 12:53:20","post_content":"\n

In the last couple of weeks, I had some long phone conversations with a few of my old buddies. I had not spoken to them in several months. The COVID situation was helping to connect with many through video calls rather than just messages on social media. One of them works for a large engineering services organization. Two others are in R&D organizations. One thing that struck me was everybody was referring to one project or the other they were working on (in their workplace of course). So you might ask \"so what is the issue?\"<\/em><\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Project approach is most common<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Within most IT and R&D organization, people are used to being \u201cassigned\u201d to projects. Once they finish one a project, they move on to another. An engineer typically fills up a resume with major projects completed and contributions made. Strong project management practices have evolved to closely monitor individual tasks and resources (engineers and other materials). Project managers manage risks that could impact project completion and thereby its objectives. Funding is done for projects based on resources (both people and material). But, projects by definition are temporary in nature and this can drive thinking and decision making. Once Projects get closed most of the learnings too get wrapped up. So is there a better way to organize?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Transition from Project thinking to Product Thinking<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

As part of Lean-Agile transformation,<\/strong> one of the foundation principles we convey is Product Thinking <\/strong>and Long-term Stable Teams.<\/strong> A department and in turn a larger organization should ideally be an aggregation of carefully designed teams each with a manageable size of members having requisite skills. Product thinking is about slices of customer value rather than set of project work<\/em><\/strong> packages. Product work gets assigned to teams as opposed to an individual getting assigned work. All work is then accomplished collectively by the members as one team<\/strong>. Product by nature lasts longer till it loses its utility value. So long-term stable teams and product thinking will allow members to be invested in their team identity, evolve team norms and practices and become high performing over a period of time. Customer value gets delivered over a longer period of time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continuous Improvement<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Once there is a long-term mindset, it enables Continuous Improvement<\/strong>, which is the next foundation element of Lean-Agile thinking. The teams will be able to develop a systematic understanding of the current state of performance indicators. They get time to carefully think of any improvements and can implement the same so that performance remains stable and also can improve. They can set standards and practices to ensure stability. It is difficult to imagine how this can happen in a temporary project setup where the key objective is to finish a project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Talk to us if you are wondering how Lean-Agile transformation can change Projects based organization? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

#ProjectToProduct, #ProductThinking, #OrganizeAroundValue, #ContinuousImprovement, #LongtermStableTeams<\/p>\n","post_title":"Lean-Agile in Projects Organization \u2013 is it oil in water?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"17570-2","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 13:08:07","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 13:08:07","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17570","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":2},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 2 of 2 1 2
\n

First it is about Enterprise Agility<\/strong> and how people are organized in terms of Agile Teams to adapt to the changes and continuously deliver customer value. Within teams, there is a need to have people with T-Shaped Skills<\/strong>. Each team member not only have deep skills in one or two areas but also have broad complementary skills to the extent practical \u2013 Portfolio of Skills<\/strong>. The leadership and management in organizations have to help team members in managing this portfolio and track both Half-Life <\/strong>and CAGR<\/strong>. The portfolio would also apply at the team and organization level. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then it is incumbent on leadership to continuously<\/strong> make investments on growing skills and knowledge <\/strong>and prune the eroding ones<\/strong>. At the same time, an individual has to embrace life-long learning to actively manage the portfolio. Some individuals might end up having a non-performing portfolio whereas some others may build a high-performing portfolio. A combined high-performing portfolio of Skills would benefit individuals, teams and organizations.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CAGR & Half-Life of Skills & Knowledge","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"cagr-half-life-of-skills-knowledge","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 12:41:21","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 12:41:21","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17980","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17570,"post_author":"10","post_date":"2020-11-23 18:23:20","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-23 12:53:20","post_content":"\n

In the last couple of weeks, I had some long phone conversations with a few of my old buddies. I had not spoken to them in several months. The COVID situation was helping to connect with many through video calls rather than just messages on social media. One of them works for a large engineering services organization. Two others are in R&D organizations. One thing that struck me was everybody was referring to one project or the other they were working on (in their workplace of course). So you might ask \"so what is the issue?\"<\/em><\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Project approach is most common<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Within most IT and R&D organization, people are used to being \u201cassigned\u201d to projects. Once they finish one a project, they move on to another. An engineer typically fills up a resume with major projects completed and contributions made. Strong project management practices have evolved to closely monitor individual tasks and resources (engineers and other materials). Project managers manage risks that could impact project completion and thereby its objectives. Funding is done for projects based on resources (both people and material). But, projects by definition are temporary in nature and this can drive thinking and decision making. Once Projects get closed most of the learnings too get wrapped up. So is there a better way to organize?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Transition from Project thinking to Product Thinking<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

As part of Lean-Agile transformation,<\/strong> one of the foundation principles we convey is Product Thinking <\/strong>and Long-term Stable Teams.<\/strong> A department and in turn a larger organization should ideally be an aggregation of carefully designed teams each with a manageable size of members having requisite skills. Product thinking is about slices of customer value rather than set of project work<\/em><\/strong> packages. Product work gets assigned to teams as opposed to an individual getting assigned work. All work is then accomplished collectively by the members as one team<\/strong>. Product by nature lasts longer till it loses its utility value. So long-term stable teams and product thinking will allow members to be invested in their team identity, evolve team norms and practices and become high performing over a period of time. Customer value gets delivered over a longer period of time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continuous Improvement<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Once there is a long-term mindset, it enables Continuous Improvement<\/strong>, which is the next foundation element of Lean-Agile thinking. The teams will be able to develop a systematic understanding of the current state of performance indicators. They get time to carefully think of any improvements and can implement the same so that performance remains stable and also can improve. They can set standards and practices to ensure stability. It is difficult to imagine how this can happen in a temporary project setup where the key objective is to finish a project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Talk to us if you are wondering how Lean-Agile transformation can change Projects based organization? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

#ProjectToProduct, #ProductThinking, #OrganizeAroundValue, #ContinuousImprovement, #LongtermStableTeams<\/p>\n","post_title":"Lean-Agile in Projects Organization \u2013 is it oil in water?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"17570-2","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 13:08:07","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 13:08:07","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17570","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":2},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 2 of 2 1 2
\n

What is the implication for Organizations? <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

First it is about Enterprise Agility<\/strong> and how people are organized in terms of Agile Teams to adapt to the changes and continuously deliver customer value. Within teams, there is a need to have people with T-Shaped Skills<\/strong>. Each team member not only have deep skills in one or two areas but also have broad complementary skills to the extent practical \u2013 Portfolio of Skills<\/strong>. The leadership and management in organizations have to help team members in managing this portfolio and track both Half-Life <\/strong>and CAGR<\/strong>. The portfolio would also apply at the team and organization level. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then it is incumbent on leadership to continuously<\/strong> make investments on growing skills and knowledge <\/strong>and prune the eroding ones<\/strong>. At the same time, an individual has to embrace life-long learning to actively manage the portfolio. Some individuals might end up having a non-performing portfolio whereas some others may build a high-performing portfolio. A combined high-performing portfolio of Skills would benefit individuals, teams and organizations.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CAGR & Half-Life of Skills & Knowledge","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"cagr-half-life-of-skills-knowledge","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 12:41:21","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 12:41:21","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17980","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17570,"post_author":"10","post_date":"2020-11-23 18:23:20","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-23 12:53:20","post_content":"\n

In the last couple of weeks, I had some long phone conversations with a few of my old buddies. I had not spoken to them in several months. The COVID situation was helping to connect with many through video calls rather than just messages on social media. One of them works for a large engineering services organization. Two others are in R&D organizations. One thing that struck me was everybody was referring to one project or the other they were working on (in their workplace of course). So you might ask \"so what is the issue?\"<\/em><\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Project approach is most common<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Within most IT and R&D organization, people are used to being \u201cassigned\u201d to projects. Once they finish one a project, they move on to another. An engineer typically fills up a resume with major projects completed and contributions made. Strong project management practices have evolved to closely monitor individual tasks and resources (engineers and other materials). Project managers manage risks that could impact project completion and thereby its objectives. Funding is done for projects based on resources (both people and material). But, projects by definition are temporary in nature and this can drive thinking and decision making. Once Projects get closed most of the learnings too get wrapped up. So is there a better way to organize?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Transition from Project thinking to Product Thinking<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

As part of Lean-Agile transformation,<\/strong> one of the foundation principles we convey is Product Thinking <\/strong>and Long-term Stable Teams.<\/strong> A department and in turn a larger organization should ideally be an aggregation of carefully designed teams each with a manageable size of members having requisite skills. Product thinking is about slices of customer value rather than set of project work<\/em><\/strong> packages. Product work gets assigned to teams as opposed to an individual getting assigned work. All work is then accomplished collectively by the members as one team<\/strong>. Product by nature lasts longer till it loses its utility value. So long-term stable teams and product thinking will allow members to be invested in their team identity, evolve team norms and practices and become high performing over a period of time. Customer value gets delivered over a longer period of time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continuous Improvement<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Once there is a long-term mindset, it enables Continuous Improvement<\/strong>, which is the next foundation element of Lean-Agile thinking. The teams will be able to develop a systematic understanding of the current state of performance indicators. They get time to carefully think of any improvements and can implement the same so that performance remains stable and also can improve. They can set standards and practices to ensure stability. It is difficult to imagine how this can happen in a temporary project setup where the key objective is to finish a project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Talk to us if you are wondering how Lean-Agile transformation can change Projects based organization? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

#ProjectToProduct, #ProductThinking, #OrganizeAroundValue, #ContinuousImprovement, #LongtermStableTeams<\/p>\n","post_title":"Lean-Agile in Projects Organization \u2013 is it oil in water?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"17570-2","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 13:08:07","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 13:08:07","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17570","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":2},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 2 of 2 1 2
\n

On the other hand, many skills are likely to erode in utility value<\/strong> as quantified by Half-Life<\/strong>. The half-life period would be a good point for a decision, to drop the skill from the portfolio sometime soon and potentially replace with another skill. This is irrespective of the time that has taken to accumulate the same. The half-life is generally determined by the rapidity of changes in that technology or industry domain. This may also be dependent upon the speed of changes and strategies pursued within a particular company. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is the implication for Organizations? <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

First it is about Enterprise Agility<\/strong> and how people are organized in terms of Agile Teams to adapt to the changes and continuously deliver customer value. Within teams, there is a need to have people with T-Shaped Skills<\/strong>. Each team member not only have deep skills in one or two areas but also have broad complementary skills to the extent practical \u2013 Portfolio of Skills<\/strong>. The leadership and management in organizations have to help team members in managing this portfolio and track both Half-Life <\/strong>and CAGR<\/strong>. The portfolio would also apply at the team and organization level. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then it is incumbent on leadership to continuously<\/strong> make investments on growing skills and knowledge <\/strong>and prune the eroding ones<\/strong>. At the same time, an individual has to embrace life-long learning to actively manage the portfolio. Some individuals might end up having a non-performing portfolio whereas some others may build a high-performing portfolio. A combined high-performing portfolio of Skills would benefit individuals, teams and organizations.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CAGR & Half-Life of Skills & Knowledge","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"cagr-half-life-of-skills-knowledge","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 12:41:21","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 12:41:21","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17980","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17570,"post_author":"10","post_date":"2020-11-23 18:23:20","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-23 12:53:20","post_content":"\n

In the last couple of weeks, I had some long phone conversations with a few of my old buddies. I had not spoken to them in several months. The COVID situation was helping to connect with many through video calls rather than just messages on social media. One of them works for a large engineering services organization. Two others are in R&D organizations. One thing that struck me was everybody was referring to one project or the other they were working on (in their workplace of course). So you might ask \"so what is the issue?\"<\/em><\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Project approach is most common<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Within most IT and R&D organization, people are used to being \u201cassigned\u201d to projects. Once they finish one a project, they move on to another. An engineer typically fills up a resume with major projects completed and contributions made. Strong project management practices have evolved to closely monitor individual tasks and resources (engineers and other materials). Project managers manage risks that could impact project completion and thereby its objectives. Funding is done for projects based on resources (both people and material). But, projects by definition are temporary in nature and this can drive thinking and decision making. Once Projects get closed most of the learnings too get wrapped up. So is there a better way to organize?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Transition from Project thinking to Product Thinking<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

As part of Lean-Agile transformation,<\/strong> one of the foundation principles we convey is Product Thinking <\/strong>and Long-term Stable Teams.<\/strong> A department and in turn a larger organization should ideally be an aggregation of carefully designed teams each with a manageable size of members having requisite skills. Product thinking is about slices of customer value rather than set of project work<\/em><\/strong> packages. Product work gets assigned to teams as opposed to an individual getting assigned work. All work is then accomplished collectively by the members as one team<\/strong>. Product by nature lasts longer till it loses its utility value. So long-term stable teams and product thinking will allow members to be invested in their team identity, evolve team norms and practices and become high performing over a period of time. Customer value gets delivered over a longer period of time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continuous Improvement<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Once there is a long-term mindset, it enables Continuous Improvement<\/strong>, which is the next foundation element of Lean-Agile thinking. The teams will be able to develop a systematic understanding of the current state of performance indicators. They get time to carefully think of any improvements and can implement the same so that performance remains stable and also can improve. They can set standards and practices to ensure stability. It is difficult to imagine how this can happen in a temporary project setup where the key objective is to finish a project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Talk to us if you are wondering how Lean-Agile transformation can change Projects based organization? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

#ProjectToProduct, #ProductThinking, #OrganizeAroundValue, #ContinuousImprovement, #LongtermStableTeams<\/p>\n","post_title":"Lean-Agile in Projects Organization \u2013 is it oil in water?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"17570-2","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 13:08:07","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 13:08:07","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17570","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":2},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 2 of 2 1 2
\n

We propose that it is very important to view Skills and Knowledge from both the perspectives of past CAGR and Half-Life which is in the future. As an engineer one can start by capturing the Portfolio of Skills and Knowledge<\/strong> that one possesses. Then one can do an analysis and develop a good understanding on which skills and knowledge in this portfolio. One also needs to be aware of which of the skills have accumulated value<\/strong> and have grown at a good rate. A particular skill or an industry specific knowledge can dramatically accumulate value when there is a surge in demand. More so some game changer ideas or technology<\/strong> can create such a surge. For example, in Digital Transformation<\/strong> - Smartphone apps led services, Smart Devices, Social Media led engagement, Cloud Enablement, Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to name a few.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the other hand, many skills are likely to erode in utility value<\/strong> as quantified by Half-Life<\/strong>. The half-life period would be a good point for a decision, to drop the skill from the portfolio sometime soon and potentially replace with another skill. This is irrespective of the time that has taken to accumulate the same. The half-life is generally determined by the rapidity of changes in that technology or industry domain. This may also be dependent upon the speed of changes and strategies pursued within a particular company. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is the implication for Organizations? <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

First it is about Enterprise Agility<\/strong> and how people are organized in terms of Agile Teams to adapt to the changes and continuously deliver customer value. Within teams, there is a need to have people with T-Shaped Skills<\/strong>. Each team member not only have deep skills in one or two areas but also have broad complementary skills to the extent practical \u2013 Portfolio of Skills<\/strong>. The leadership and management in organizations have to help team members in managing this portfolio and track both Half-Life <\/strong>and CAGR<\/strong>. The portfolio would also apply at the team and organization level. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then it is incumbent on leadership to continuously<\/strong> make investments on growing skills and knowledge <\/strong>and prune the eroding ones<\/strong>. At the same time, an individual has to embrace life-long learning to actively manage the portfolio. Some individuals might end up having a non-performing portfolio whereas some others may build a high-performing portfolio. A combined high-performing portfolio of Skills would benefit individuals, teams and organizations.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CAGR & Half-Life of Skills & Knowledge","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"cagr-half-life-of-skills-knowledge","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 12:41:21","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 12:41:21","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17980","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17570,"post_author":"10","post_date":"2020-11-23 18:23:20","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-23 12:53:20","post_content":"\n

In the last couple of weeks, I had some long phone conversations with a few of my old buddies. I had not spoken to them in several months. The COVID situation was helping to connect with many through video calls rather than just messages on social media. One of them works for a large engineering services organization. Two others are in R&D organizations. One thing that struck me was everybody was referring to one project or the other they were working on (in their workplace of course). So you might ask \"so what is the issue?\"<\/em><\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Project approach is most common<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Within most IT and R&D organization, people are used to being \u201cassigned\u201d to projects. Once they finish one a project, they move on to another. An engineer typically fills up a resume with major projects completed and contributions made. Strong project management practices have evolved to closely monitor individual tasks and resources (engineers and other materials). Project managers manage risks that could impact project completion and thereby its objectives. Funding is done for projects based on resources (both people and material). But, projects by definition are temporary in nature and this can drive thinking and decision making. Once Projects get closed most of the learnings too get wrapped up. So is there a better way to organize?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Transition from Project thinking to Product Thinking<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

As part of Lean-Agile transformation,<\/strong> one of the foundation principles we convey is Product Thinking <\/strong>and Long-term Stable Teams.<\/strong> A department and in turn a larger organization should ideally be an aggregation of carefully designed teams each with a manageable size of members having requisite skills. Product thinking is about slices of customer value rather than set of project work<\/em><\/strong> packages. Product work gets assigned to teams as opposed to an individual getting assigned work. All work is then accomplished collectively by the members as one team<\/strong>. Product by nature lasts longer till it loses its utility value. So long-term stable teams and product thinking will allow members to be invested in their team identity, evolve team norms and practices and become high performing over a period of time. Customer value gets delivered over a longer period of time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continuous Improvement<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Once there is a long-term mindset, it enables Continuous Improvement<\/strong>, which is the next foundation element of Lean-Agile thinking. The teams will be able to develop a systematic understanding of the current state of performance indicators. They get time to carefully think of any improvements and can implement the same so that performance remains stable and also can improve. They can set standards and practices to ensure stability. It is difficult to imagine how this can happen in a temporary project setup where the key objective is to finish a project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Talk to us if you are wondering how Lean-Agile transformation can change Projects based organization? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

#ProjectToProduct, #ProductThinking, #OrganizeAroundValue, #ContinuousImprovement, #LongtermStableTeams<\/p>\n","post_title":"Lean-Agile in Projects Organization \u2013 is it oil in water?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"17570-2","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 13:08:07","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 13:08:07","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17570","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":2},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 2 of 2 1 2
\n

How can one use both the above ideas at an individual level? <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

We propose that it is very important to view Skills and Knowledge from both the perspectives of past CAGR and Half-Life which is in the future. As an engineer one can start by capturing the Portfolio of Skills and Knowledge<\/strong> that one possesses. Then one can do an analysis and develop a good understanding on which skills and knowledge in this portfolio. One also needs to be aware of which of the skills have accumulated value<\/strong> and have grown at a good rate. A particular skill or an industry specific knowledge can dramatically accumulate value when there is a surge in demand. More so some game changer ideas or technology<\/strong> can create such a surge. For example, in Digital Transformation<\/strong> - Smartphone apps led services, Smart Devices, Social Media led engagement, Cloud Enablement, Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to name a few.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the other hand, many skills are likely to erode in utility value<\/strong> as quantified by Half-Life<\/strong>. The half-life period would be a good point for a decision, to drop the skill from the portfolio sometime soon and potentially replace with another skill. This is irrespective of the time that has taken to accumulate the same. The half-life is generally determined by the rapidity of changes in that technology or industry domain. This may also be dependent upon the speed of changes and strategies pursued within a particular company. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is the implication for Organizations? <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

First it is about Enterprise Agility<\/strong> and how people are organized in terms of Agile Teams to adapt to the changes and continuously deliver customer value. Within teams, there is a need to have people with T-Shaped Skills<\/strong>. Each team member not only have deep skills in one or two areas but also have broad complementary skills to the extent practical \u2013 Portfolio of Skills<\/strong>. The leadership and management in organizations have to help team members in managing this portfolio and track both Half-Life <\/strong>and CAGR<\/strong>. The portfolio would also apply at the team and organization level. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then it is incumbent on leadership to continuously<\/strong> make investments on growing skills and knowledge <\/strong>and prune the eroding ones<\/strong>. At the same time, an individual has to embrace life-long learning to actively manage the portfolio. Some individuals might end up having a non-performing portfolio whereas some others may build a high-performing portfolio. A combined high-performing portfolio of Skills would benefit individuals, teams and organizations.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CAGR & Half-Life of Skills & Knowledge","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"cagr-half-life-of-skills-knowledge","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 12:41:21","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 12:41:21","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17980","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17570,"post_author":"10","post_date":"2020-11-23 18:23:20","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-23 12:53:20","post_content":"\n

In the last couple of weeks, I had some long phone conversations with a few of my old buddies. I had not spoken to them in several months. The COVID situation was helping to connect with many through video calls rather than just messages on social media. One of them works for a large engineering services organization. Two others are in R&D organizations. One thing that struck me was everybody was referring to one project or the other they were working on (in their workplace of course). So you might ask \"so what is the issue?\"<\/em><\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Project approach is most common<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Within most IT and R&D organization, people are used to being \u201cassigned\u201d to projects. Once they finish one a project, they move on to another. An engineer typically fills up a resume with major projects completed and contributions made. Strong project management practices have evolved to closely monitor individual tasks and resources (engineers and other materials). Project managers manage risks that could impact project completion and thereby its objectives. Funding is done for projects based on resources (both people and material). But, projects by definition are temporary in nature and this can drive thinking and decision making. Once Projects get closed most of the learnings too get wrapped up. So is there a better way to organize?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Transition from Project thinking to Product Thinking<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

As part of Lean-Agile transformation,<\/strong> one of the foundation principles we convey is Product Thinking <\/strong>and Long-term Stable Teams.<\/strong> A department and in turn a larger organization should ideally be an aggregation of carefully designed teams each with a manageable size of members having requisite skills. Product thinking is about slices of customer value rather than set of project work<\/em><\/strong> packages. Product work gets assigned to teams as opposed to an individual getting assigned work. All work is then accomplished collectively by the members as one team<\/strong>. Product by nature lasts longer till it loses its utility value. So long-term stable teams and product thinking will allow members to be invested in their team identity, evolve team norms and practices and become high performing over a period of time. Customer value gets delivered over a longer period of time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continuous Improvement<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Once there is a long-term mindset, it enables Continuous Improvement<\/strong>, which is the next foundation element of Lean-Agile thinking. The teams will be able to develop a systematic understanding of the current state of performance indicators. They get time to carefully think of any improvements and can implement the same so that performance remains stable and also can improve. They can set standards and practices to ensure stability. It is difficult to imagine how this can happen in a temporary project setup where the key objective is to finish a project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Talk to us if you are wondering how Lean-Agile transformation can change Projects based organization? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

#ProjectToProduct, #ProductThinking, #OrganizeAroundValue, #ContinuousImprovement, #LongtermStableTeams<\/p>\n","post_title":"Lean-Agile in Projects Organization \u2013 is it oil in water?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"17570-2","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 13:08:07","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 13:08:07","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17570","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":2},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 2 of 2 1 2
\n

We then can categorize these skills and knowledge and put side by side the CAGR and an estimate their Half-Life. The utility value diminishes on account of obsolescence or disruptions in the domain with entry of new ones. While one might have a spent long time in accumulating certain skills, they might lose their significance over a short period of time due to lack of application. What used to be Half-life of 5-6 years for technologies and skills earlier in many domains have now reduced to as low as 2-3 years. This is especially true for digital transformation technologies. In simple terms many skills can lose their value and become obsolete in much shorter durations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How can one use both the above ideas at an individual level? <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

We propose that it is very important to view Skills and Knowledge from both the perspectives of past CAGR and Half-Life which is in the future. As an engineer one can start by capturing the Portfolio of Skills and Knowledge<\/strong> that one possesses. Then one can do an analysis and develop a good understanding on which skills and knowledge in this portfolio. One also needs to be aware of which of the skills have accumulated value<\/strong> and have grown at a good rate. A particular skill or an industry specific knowledge can dramatically accumulate value when there is a surge in demand. More so some game changer ideas or technology<\/strong> can create such a surge. For example, in Digital Transformation<\/strong> - Smartphone apps led services, Smart Devices, Social Media led engagement, Cloud Enablement, Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to name a few.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the other hand, many skills are likely to erode in utility value<\/strong> as quantified by Half-Life<\/strong>. The half-life period would be a good point for a decision, to drop the skill from the portfolio sometime soon and potentially replace with another skill. This is irrespective of the time that has taken to accumulate the same. The half-life is generally determined by the rapidity of changes in that technology or industry domain. This may also be dependent upon the speed of changes and strategies pursued within a particular company. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is the implication for Organizations? <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

First it is about Enterprise Agility<\/strong> and how people are organized in terms of Agile Teams to adapt to the changes and continuously deliver customer value. Within teams, there is a need to have people with T-Shaped Skills<\/strong>. Each team member not only have deep skills in one or two areas but also have broad complementary skills to the extent practical \u2013 Portfolio of Skills<\/strong>. The leadership and management in organizations have to help team members in managing this portfolio and track both Half-Life <\/strong>and CAGR<\/strong>. The portfolio would also apply at the team and organization level. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then it is incumbent on leadership to continuously<\/strong> make investments on growing skills and knowledge <\/strong>and prune the eroding ones<\/strong>. At the same time, an individual has to embrace life-long learning to actively manage the portfolio. Some individuals might end up having a non-performing portfolio whereas some others may build a high-performing portfolio. A combined high-performing portfolio of Skills would benefit individuals, teams and organizations.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CAGR & Half-Life of Skills & Knowledge","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"cagr-half-life-of-skills-knowledge","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 12:41:21","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 12:41:21","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17980","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17570,"post_author":"10","post_date":"2020-11-23 18:23:20","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-23 12:53:20","post_content":"\n

In the last couple of weeks, I had some long phone conversations with a few of my old buddies. I had not spoken to them in several months. The COVID situation was helping to connect with many through video calls rather than just messages on social media. One of them works for a large engineering services organization. Two others are in R&D organizations. One thing that struck me was everybody was referring to one project or the other they were working on (in their workplace of course). So you might ask \"so what is the issue?\"<\/em><\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Project approach is most common<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Within most IT and R&D organization, people are used to being \u201cassigned\u201d to projects. Once they finish one a project, they move on to another. An engineer typically fills up a resume with major projects completed and contributions made. Strong project management practices have evolved to closely monitor individual tasks and resources (engineers and other materials). Project managers manage risks that could impact project completion and thereby its objectives. Funding is done for projects based on resources (both people and material). But, projects by definition are temporary in nature and this can drive thinking and decision making. Once Projects get closed most of the learnings too get wrapped up. So is there a better way to organize?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Transition from Project thinking to Product Thinking<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

As part of Lean-Agile transformation,<\/strong> one of the foundation principles we convey is Product Thinking <\/strong>and Long-term Stable Teams.<\/strong> A department and in turn a larger organization should ideally be an aggregation of carefully designed teams each with a manageable size of members having requisite skills. Product thinking is about slices of customer value rather than set of project work<\/em><\/strong> packages. Product work gets assigned to teams as opposed to an individual getting assigned work. All work is then accomplished collectively by the members as one team<\/strong>. Product by nature lasts longer till it loses its utility value. So long-term stable teams and product thinking will allow members to be invested in their team identity, evolve team norms and practices and become high performing over a period of time. Customer value gets delivered over a longer period of time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continuous Improvement<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Once there is a long-term mindset, it enables Continuous Improvement<\/strong>, which is the next foundation element of Lean-Agile thinking. The teams will be able to develop a systematic understanding of the current state of performance indicators. They get time to carefully think of any improvements and can implement the same so that performance remains stable and also can improve. They can set standards and practices to ensure stability. It is difficult to imagine how this can happen in a temporary project setup where the key objective is to finish a project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Talk to us if you are wondering how Lean-Agile transformation can change Projects based organization? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

#ProjectToProduct, #ProductThinking, #OrganizeAroundValue, #ContinuousImprovement, #LongtermStableTeams<\/p>\n","post_title":"Lean-Agile in Projects Organization \u2013 is it oil in water?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"17570-2","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 13:08:07","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 13:08:07","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17570","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":2},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 2 of 2 1 2
\n

We can apply this phenomenon to any of the skills and knowledge. Usage of certain tools, skills in specific technologies, practices like critical thinking, problem solving, communication, best practices & lessons learnt, industry or domain specific nuances or transfer learning from one domain to another are all good examples of skill and knowledge. Some Emotional Quotient (EQ) related competencies can also qualify for this category. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We then can categorize these skills and knowledge and put side by side the CAGR and an estimate their Half-Life. The utility value diminishes on account of obsolescence or disruptions in the domain with entry of new ones. While one might have a spent long time in accumulating certain skills, they might lose their significance over a short period of time due to lack of application. What used to be Half-life of 5-6 years for technologies and skills earlier in many domains have now reduced to as low as 2-3 years. This is especially true for digital transformation technologies. In simple terms many skills can lose their value and become obsolete in much shorter durations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How can one use both the above ideas at an individual level? <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

We propose that it is very important to view Skills and Knowledge from both the perspectives of past CAGR and Half-Life which is in the future. As an engineer one can start by capturing the Portfolio of Skills and Knowledge<\/strong> that one possesses. Then one can do an analysis and develop a good understanding on which skills and knowledge in this portfolio. One also needs to be aware of which of the skills have accumulated value<\/strong> and have grown at a good rate. A particular skill or an industry specific knowledge can dramatically accumulate value when there is a surge in demand. More so some game changer ideas or technology<\/strong> can create such a surge. For example, in Digital Transformation<\/strong> - Smartphone apps led services, Smart Devices, Social Media led engagement, Cloud Enablement, Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to name a few.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the other hand, many skills are likely to erode in utility value<\/strong> as quantified by Half-Life<\/strong>. The half-life period would be a good point for a decision, to drop the skill from the portfolio sometime soon and potentially replace with another skill. This is irrespective of the time that has taken to accumulate the same. The half-life is generally determined by the rapidity of changes in that technology or industry domain. This may also be dependent upon the speed of changes and strategies pursued within a particular company. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is the implication for Organizations? <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

First it is about Enterprise Agility<\/strong> and how people are organized in terms of Agile Teams to adapt to the changes and continuously deliver customer value. Within teams, there is a need to have people with T-Shaped Skills<\/strong>. Each team member not only have deep skills in one or two areas but also have broad complementary skills to the extent practical \u2013 Portfolio of Skills<\/strong>. The leadership and management in organizations have to help team members in managing this portfolio and track both Half-Life <\/strong>and CAGR<\/strong>. The portfolio would also apply at the team and organization level. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then it is incumbent on leadership to continuously<\/strong> make investments on growing skills and knowledge <\/strong>and prune the eroding ones<\/strong>. At the same time, an individual has to embrace life-long learning to actively manage the portfolio. Some individuals might end up having a non-performing portfolio whereas some others may build a high-performing portfolio. A combined high-performing portfolio of Skills would benefit individuals, teams and organizations.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CAGR & Half-Life of Skills & Knowledge","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"cagr-half-life-of-skills-knowledge","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 12:41:21","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 12:41:21","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17980","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17570,"post_author":"10","post_date":"2020-11-23 18:23:20","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-23 12:53:20","post_content":"\n

In the last couple of weeks, I had some long phone conversations with a few of my old buddies. I had not spoken to them in several months. The COVID situation was helping to connect with many through video calls rather than just messages on social media. One of them works for a large engineering services organization. Two others are in R&D organizations. One thing that struck me was everybody was referring to one project or the other they were working on (in their workplace of course). So you might ask \"so what is the issue?\"<\/em><\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Project approach is most common<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Within most IT and R&D organization, people are used to being \u201cassigned\u201d to projects. Once they finish one a project, they move on to another. An engineer typically fills up a resume with major projects completed and contributions made. Strong project management practices have evolved to closely monitor individual tasks and resources (engineers and other materials). Project managers manage risks that could impact project completion and thereby its objectives. Funding is done for projects based on resources (both people and material). But, projects by definition are temporary in nature and this can drive thinking and decision making. Once Projects get closed most of the learnings too get wrapped up. So is there a better way to organize?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Transition from Project thinking to Product Thinking<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

As part of Lean-Agile transformation,<\/strong> one of the foundation principles we convey is Product Thinking <\/strong>and Long-term Stable Teams.<\/strong> A department and in turn a larger organization should ideally be an aggregation of carefully designed teams each with a manageable size of members having requisite skills. Product thinking is about slices of customer value rather than set of project work<\/em><\/strong> packages. Product work gets assigned to teams as opposed to an individual getting assigned work. All work is then accomplished collectively by the members as one team<\/strong>. Product by nature lasts longer till it loses its utility value. So long-term stable teams and product thinking will allow members to be invested in their team identity, evolve team norms and practices and become high performing over a period of time. Customer value gets delivered over a longer period of time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continuous Improvement<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Once there is a long-term mindset, it enables Continuous Improvement<\/strong>, which is the next foundation element of Lean-Agile thinking. The teams will be able to develop a systematic understanding of the current state of performance indicators. They get time to carefully think of any improvements and can implement the same so that performance remains stable and also can improve. They can set standards and practices to ensure stability. It is difficult to imagine how this can happen in a temporary project setup where the key objective is to finish a project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Talk to us if you are wondering how Lean-Agile transformation can change Projects based organization? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

#ProjectToProduct, #ProductThinking, #OrganizeAroundValue, #ContinuousImprovement, #LongtermStableTeams<\/p>\n","post_title":"Lean-Agile in Projects Organization \u2013 is it oil in water?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"17570-2","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 13:08:07","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 13:08:07","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17570","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":2},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 2 of 2 1 2
\n

Variety of Skills<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

We can apply this phenomenon to any of the skills and knowledge. Usage of certain tools, skills in specific technologies, practices like critical thinking, problem solving, communication, best practices & lessons learnt, industry or domain specific nuances or transfer learning from one domain to another are all good examples of skill and knowledge. Some Emotional Quotient (EQ) related competencies can also qualify for this category. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We then can categorize these skills and knowledge and put side by side the CAGR and an estimate their Half-Life. The utility value diminishes on account of obsolescence or disruptions in the domain with entry of new ones. While one might have a spent long time in accumulating certain skills, they might lose their significance over a short period of time due to lack of application. What used to be Half-life of 5-6 years for technologies and skills earlier in many domains have now reduced to as low as 2-3 years. This is especially true for digital transformation technologies. In simple terms many skills can lose their value and become obsolete in much shorter durations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How can one use both the above ideas at an individual level? <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

We propose that it is very important to view Skills and Knowledge from both the perspectives of past CAGR and Half-Life which is in the future. As an engineer one can start by capturing the Portfolio of Skills and Knowledge<\/strong> that one possesses. Then one can do an analysis and develop a good understanding on which skills and knowledge in this portfolio. One also needs to be aware of which of the skills have accumulated value<\/strong> and have grown at a good rate. A particular skill or an industry specific knowledge can dramatically accumulate value when there is a surge in demand. More so some game changer ideas or technology<\/strong> can create such a surge. For example, in Digital Transformation<\/strong> - Smartphone apps led services, Smart Devices, Social Media led engagement, Cloud Enablement, Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to name a few.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the other hand, many skills are likely to erode in utility value<\/strong> as quantified by Half-Life<\/strong>. The half-life period would be a good point for a decision, to drop the skill from the portfolio sometime soon and potentially replace with another skill. This is irrespective of the time that has taken to accumulate the same. The half-life is generally determined by the rapidity of changes in that technology or industry domain. This may also be dependent upon the speed of changes and strategies pursued within a particular company. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is the implication for Organizations? <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

First it is about Enterprise Agility<\/strong> and how people are organized in terms of Agile Teams to adapt to the changes and continuously deliver customer value. Within teams, there is a need to have people with T-Shaped Skills<\/strong>. Each team member not only have deep skills in one or two areas but also have broad complementary skills to the extent practical \u2013 Portfolio of Skills<\/strong>. The leadership and management in organizations have to help team members in managing this portfolio and track both Half-Life <\/strong>and CAGR<\/strong>. The portfolio would also apply at the team and organization level. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then it is incumbent on leadership to continuously<\/strong> make investments on growing skills and knowledge <\/strong>and prune the eroding ones<\/strong>. At the same time, an individual has to embrace life-long learning to actively manage the portfolio. Some individuals might end up having a non-performing portfolio whereas some others may build a high-performing portfolio. A combined high-performing portfolio of Skills would benefit individuals, teams and organizations.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CAGR & Half-Life of Skills & Knowledge","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"cagr-half-life-of-skills-knowledge","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 12:41:21","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 12:41:21","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17980","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17570,"post_author":"10","post_date":"2020-11-23 18:23:20","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-23 12:53:20","post_content":"\n

In the last couple of weeks, I had some long phone conversations with a few of my old buddies. I had not spoken to them in several months. The COVID situation was helping to connect with many through video calls rather than just messages on social media. One of them works for a large engineering services organization. Two others are in R&D organizations. One thing that struck me was everybody was referring to one project or the other they were working on (in their workplace of course). So you might ask \"so what is the issue?\"<\/em><\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Project approach is most common<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Within most IT and R&D organization, people are used to being \u201cassigned\u201d to projects. Once they finish one a project, they move on to another. An engineer typically fills up a resume with major projects completed and contributions made. Strong project management practices have evolved to closely monitor individual tasks and resources (engineers and other materials). Project managers manage risks that could impact project completion and thereby its objectives. Funding is done for projects based on resources (both people and material). But, projects by definition are temporary in nature and this can drive thinking and decision making. Once Projects get closed most of the learnings too get wrapped up. So is there a better way to organize?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Transition from Project thinking to Product Thinking<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

As part of Lean-Agile transformation,<\/strong> one of the foundation principles we convey is Product Thinking <\/strong>and Long-term Stable Teams.<\/strong> A department and in turn a larger organization should ideally be an aggregation of carefully designed teams each with a manageable size of members having requisite skills. Product thinking is about slices of customer value rather than set of project work<\/em><\/strong> packages. Product work gets assigned to teams as opposed to an individual getting assigned work. All work is then accomplished collectively by the members as one team<\/strong>. Product by nature lasts longer till it loses its utility value. So long-term stable teams and product thinking will allow members to be invested in their team identity, evolve team norms and practices and become high performing over a period of time. Customer value gets delivered over a longer period of time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continuous Improvement<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Once there is a long-term mindset, it enables Continuous Improvement<\/strong>, which is the next foundation element of Lean-Agile thinking. The teams will be able to develop a systematic understanding of the current state of performance indicators. They get time to carefully think of any improvements and can implement the same so that performance remains stable and also can improve. They can set standards and practices to ensure stability. It is difficult to imagine how this can happen in a temporary project setup where the key objective is to finish a project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Talk to us if you are wondering how Lean-Agile transformation can change Projects based organization? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

#ProjectToProduct, #ProductThinking, #OrganizeAroundValue, #ContinuousImprovement, #LongtermStableTeams<\/p>\n","post_title":"Lean-Agile in Projects Organization \u2013 is it oil in water?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"17570-2","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 13:08:07","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 13:08:07","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17570","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":2},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 2 of 2 1 2
\n

Now let us look at Decay. Half-Life<\/strong> was originally used in Nuclear Physics, which is the time required for a quantity to reduce to half of its initial value. The term describes how quickly unstable atoms undergo radioactive decay or how long stable atoms survive (https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Half-life). However, for our purpose, we can generalize this concept to describe any phenomenon where \u201cOver what duration a utility value or worth decreases by Half\u201d<\/strong>. Contrary to what an engineer wishes, Skills and Knowledge also Decay over time. Most often the market and industry conditions determines this decay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Variety of Skills<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

We can apply this phenomenon to any of the skills and knowledge. Usage of certain tools, skills in specific technologies, practices like critical thinking, problem solving, communication, best practices & lessons learnt, industry or domain specific nuances or transfer learning from one domain to another are all good examples of skill and knowledge. Some Emotional Quotient (EQ) related competencies can also qualify for this category. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We then can categorize these skills and knowledge and put side by side the CAGR and an estimate their Half-Life. The utility value diminishes on account of obsolescence or disruptions in the domain with entry of new ones. While one might have a spent long time in accumulating certain skills, they might lose their significance over a short period of time due to lack of application. What used to be Half-life of 5-6 years for technologies and skills earlier in many domains have now reduced to as low as 2-3 years. This is especially true for digital transformation technologies. In simple terms many skills can lose their value and become obsolete in much shorter durations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How can one use both the above ideas at an individual level? <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

We propose that it is very important to view Skills and Knowledge from both the perspectives of past CAGR and Half-Life which is in the future. As an engineer one can start by capturing the Portfolio of Skills and Knowledge<\/strong> that one possesses. Then one can do an analysis and develop a good understanding on which skills and knowledge in this portfolio. One also needs to be aware of which of the skills have accumulated value<\/strong> and have grown at a good rate. A particular skill or an industry specific knowledge can dramatically accumulate value when there is a surge in demand. More so some game changer ideas or technology<\/strong> can create such a surge. For example, in Digital Transformation<\/strong> - Smartphone apps led services, Smart Devices, Social Media led engagement, Cloud Enablement, Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to name a few.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the other hand, many skills are likely to erode in utility value<\/strong> as quantified by Half-Life<\/strong>. The half-life period would be a good point for a decision, to drop the skill from the portfolio sometime soon and potentially replace with another skill. This is irrespective of the time that has taken to accumulate the same. The half-life is generally determined by the rapidity of changes in that technology or industry domain. This may also be dependent upon the speed of changes and strategies pursued within a particular company. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is the implication for Organizations? <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

First it is about Enterprise Agility<\/strong> and how people are organized in terms of Agile Teams to adapt to the changes and continuously deliver customer value. Within teams, there is a need to have people with T-Shaped Skills<\/strong>. Each team member not only have deep skills in one or two areas but also have broad complementary skills to the extent practical \u2013 Portfolio of Skills<\/strong>. The leadership and management in organizations have to help team members in managing this portfolio and track both Half-Life <\/strong>and CAGR<\/strong>. The portfolio would also apply at the team and organization level. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then it is incumbent on leadership to continuously<\/strong> make investments on growing skills and knowledge <\/strong>and prune the eroding ones<\/strong>. At the same time, an individual has to embrace life-long learning to actively manage the portfolio. Some individuals might end up having a non-performing portfolio whereas some others may build a high-performing portfolio. A combined high-performing portfolio of Skills would benefit individuals, teams and organizations.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CAGR & Half-Life of Skills & Knowledge","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"cagr-half-life-of-skills-knowledge","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 12:41:21","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 12:41:21","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17980","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17570,"post_author":"10","post_date":"2020-11-23 18:23:20","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-23 12:53:20","post_content":"\n

In the last couple of weeks, I had some long phone conversations with a few of my old buddies. I had not spoken to them in several months. The COVID situation was helping to connect with many through video calls rather than just messages on social media. One of them works for a large engineering services organization. Two others are in R&D organizations. One thing that struck me was everybody was referring to one project or the other they were working on (in their workplace of course). So you might ask \"so what is the issue?\"<\/em><\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Project approach is most common<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Within most IT and R&D organization, people are used to being \u201cassigned\u201d to projects. Once they finish one a project, they move on to another. An engineer typically fills up a resume with major projects completed and contributions made. Strong project management practices have evolved to closely monitor individual tasks and resources (engineers and other materials). Project managers manage risks that could impact project completion and thereby its objectives. Funding is done for projects based on resources (both people and material). But, projects by definition are temporary in nature and this can drive thinking and decision making. Once Projects get closed most of the learnings too get wrapped up. So is there a better way to organize?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Transition from Project thinking to Product Thinking<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

As part of Lean-Agile transformation,<\/strong> one of the foundation principles we convey is Product Thinking <\/strong>and Long-term Stable Teams.<\/strong> A department and in turn a larger organization should ideally be an aggregation of carefully designed teams each with a manageable size of members having requisite skills. Product thinking is about slices of customer value rather than set of project work<\/em><\/strong> packages. Product work gets assigned to teams as opposed to an individual getting assigned work. All work is then accomplished collectively by the members as one team<\/strong>. Product by nature lasts longer till it loses its utility value. So long-term stable teams and product thinking will allow members to be invested in their team identity, evolve team norms and practices and become high performing over a period of time. Customer value gets delivered over a longer period of time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continuous Improvement<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Once there is a long-term mindset, it enables Continuous Improvement<\/strong>, which is the next foundation element of Lean-Agile thinking. The teams will be able to develop a systematic understanding of the current state of performance indicators. They get time to carefully think of any improvements and can implement the same so that performance remains stable and also can improve. They can set standards and practices to ensure stability. It is difficult to imagine how this can happen in a temporary project setup where the key objective is to finish a project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Talk to us if you are wondering how Lean-Agile transformation can change Projects based organization? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

#ProjectToProduct, #ProductThinking, #OrganizeAroundValue, #ContinuousImprovement, #LongtermStableTeams<\/p>\n","post_title":"Lean-Agile in Projects Organization \u2013 is it oil in water?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"17570-2","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 13:08:07","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 13:08:07","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17570","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":2},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 2 of 2 1 2
\n

Half-Life of Skills<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Now let us look at Decay. Half-Life<\/strong> was originally used in Nuclear Physics, which is the time required for a quantity to reduce to half of its initial value. The term describes how quickly unstable atoms undergo radioactive decay or how long stable atoms survive (https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Half-life). However, for our purpose, we can generalize this concept to describe any phenomenon where \u201cOver what duration a utility value or worth decreases by Half\u201d<\/strong>. Contrary to what an engineer wishes, Skills and Knowledge also Decay over time. Most often the market and industry conditions determines this decay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Variety of Skills<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

We can apply this phenomenon to any of the skills and knowledge. Usage of certain tools, skills in specific technologies, practices like critical thinking, problem solving, communication, best practices & lessons learnt, industry or domain specific nuances or transfer learning from one domain to another are all good examples of skill and knowledge. Some Emotional Quotient (EQ) related competencies can also qualify for this category. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We then can categorize these skills and knowledge and put side by side the CAGR and an estimate their Half-Life. The utility value diminishes on account of obsolescence or disruptions in the domain with entry of new ones. While one might have a spent long time in accumulating certain skills, they might lose their significance over a short period of time due to lack of application. What used to be Half-life of 5-6 years for technologies and skills earlier in many domains have now reduced to as low as 2-3 years. This is especially true for digital transformation technologies. In simple terms many skills can lose their value and become obsolete in much shorter durations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How can one use both the above ideas at an individual level? <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

We propose that it is very important to view Skills and Knowledge from both the perspectives of past CAGR and Half-Life which is in the future. As an engineer one can start by capturing the Portfolio of Skills and Knowledge<\/strong> that one possesses. Then one can do an analysis and develop a good understanding on which skills and knowledge in this portfolio. One also needs to be aware of which of the skills have accumulated value<\/strong> and have grown at a good rate. A particular skill or an industry specific knowledge can dramatically accumulate value when there is a surge in demand. More so some game changer ideas or technology<\/strong> can create such a surge. For example, in Digital Transformation<\/strong> - Smartphone apps led services, Smart Devices, Social Media led engagement, Cloud Enablement, Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to name a few.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the other hand, many skills are likely to erode in utility value<\/strong> as quantified by Half-Life<\/strong>. The half-life period would be a good point for a decision, to drop the skill from the portfolio sometime soon and potentially replace with another skill. This is irrespective of the time that has taken to accumulate the same. The half-life is generally determined by the rapidity of changes in that technology or industry domain. This may also be dependent upon the speed of changes and strategies pursued within a particular company. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is the implication for Organizations? <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

First it is about Enterprise Agility<\/strong> and how people are organized in terms of Agile Teams to adapt to the changes and continuously deliver customer value. Within teams, there is a need to have people with T-Shaped Skills<\/strong>. Each team member not only have deep skills in one or two areas but also have broad complementary skills to the extent practical \u2013 Portfolio of Skills<\/strong>. The leadership and management in organizations have to help team members in managing this portfolio and track both Half-Life <\/strong>and CAGR<\/strong>. The portfolio would also apply at the team and organization level. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then it is incumbent on leadership to continuously<\/strong> make investments on growing skills and knowledge <\/strong>and prune the eroding ones<\/strong>. At the same time, an individual has to embrace life-long learning to actively manage the portfolio. Some individuals might end up having a non-performing portfolio whereas some others may build a high-performing portfolio. A combined high-performing portfolio of Skills would benefit individuals, teams and organizations.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CAGR & Half-Life of Skills & Knowledge","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"cagr-half-life-of-skills-knowledge","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 12:41:21","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 12:41:21","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17980","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17570,"post_author":"10","post_date":"2020-11-23 18:23:20","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-23 12:53:20","post_content":"\n

In the last couple of weeks, I had some long phone conversations with a few of my old buddies. I had not spoken to them in several months. The COVID situation was helping to connect with many through video calls rather than just messages on social media. One of them works for a large engineering services organization. Two others are in R&D organizations. One thing that struck me was everybody was referring to one project or the other they were working on (in their workplace of course). So you might ask \"so what is the issue?\"<\/em><\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Project approach is most common<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Within most IT and R&D organization, people are used to being \u201cassigned\u201d to projects. Once they finish one a project, they move on to another. An engineer typically fills up a resume with major projects completed and contributions made. Strong project management practices have evolved to closely monitor individual tasks and resources (engineers and other materials). Project managers manage risks that could impact project completion and thereby its objectives. Funding is done for projects based on resources (both people and material). But, projects by definition are temporary in nature and this can drive thinking and decision making. Once Projects get closed most of the learnings too get wrapped up. So is there a better way to organize?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Transition from Project thinking to Product Thinking<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

As part of Lean-Agile transformation,<\/strong> one of the foundation principles we convey is Product Thinking <\/strong>and Long-term Stable Teams.<\/strong> A department and in turn a larger organization should ideally be an aggregation of carefully designed teams each with a manageable size of members having requisite skills. Product thinking is about slices of customer value rather than set of project work<\/em><\/strong> packages. Product work gets assigned to teams as opposed to an individual getting assigned work. All work is then accomplished collectively by the members as one team<\/strong>. Product by nature lasts longer till it loses its utility value. So long-term stable teams and product thinking will allow members to be invested in their team identity, evolve team norms and practices and become high performing over a period of time. Customer value gets delivered over a longer period of time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continuous Improvement<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Once there is a long-term mindset, it enables Continuous Improvement<\/strong>, which is the next foundation element of Lean-Agile thinking. The teams will be able to develop a systematic understanding of the current state of performance indicators. They get time to carefully think of any improvements and can implement the same so that performance remains stable and also can improve. They can set standards and practices to ensure stability. It is difficult to imagine how this can happen in a temporary project setup where the key objective is to finish a project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Talk to us if you are wondering how Lean-Agile transformation can change Projects based organization? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

#ProjectToProduct, #ProductThinking, #OrganizeAroundValue, #ContinuousImprovement, #LongtermStableTeams<\/p>\n","post_title":"Lean-Agile in Projects Organization \u2013 is it oil in water?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"17570-2","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 13:08:07","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 13:08:07","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17570","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":2},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 2 of 2 1 2
\n

An engineer or a manager possesses many skills and knowledge to perform on the job. These are dependent upon the technology and industry domain. Normally most engineers are used to seeing Growth<\/strong> in their skills. There is an assumption that Value always increases<\/strong>, hence relatable to CAGR. It is a commonly used term in business to denote the growth of any phenomenon. Examples could be for revenue, unit sales or number of users. The number indicates the constant rate of growth that would take a starting value to an ending value over a particular duration. For the purposes of this article, we use CAGR to capture past data, though it can also be used for forecasts. Over a period of an engineer's work life, due to experience and application, certain skills and knowledge grow in utility value<\/strong>. Every individual wishes to grow this utility value at a high rate. An individual's investment on honing the same determines the growth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Half-Life of Skills<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Now let us look at Decay. Half-Life<\/strong> was originally used in Nuclear Physics, which is the time required for a quantity to reduce to half of its initial value. The term describes how quickly unstable atoms undergo radioactive decay or how long stable atoms survive (https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Half-life). However, for our purpose, we can generalize this concept to describe any phenomenon where \u201cOver what duration a utility value or worth decreases by Half\u201d<\/strong>. Contrary to what an engineer wishes, Skills and Knowledge also Decay over time. Most often the market and industry conditions determines this decay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Variety of Skills<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

We can apply this phenomenon to any of the skills and knowledge. Usage of certain tools, skills in specific technologies, practices like critical thinking, problem solving, communication, best practices & lessons learnt, industry or domain specific nuances or transfer learning from one domain to another are all good examples of skill and knowledge. Some Emotional Quotient (EQ) related competencies can also qualify for this category. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We then can categorize these skills and knowledge and put side by side the CAGR and an estimate their Half-Life. The utility value diminishes on account of obsolescence or disruptions in the domain with entry of new ones. While one might have a spent long time in accumulating certain skills, they might lose their significance over a short period of time due to lack of application. What used to be Half-life of 5-6 years for technologies and skills earlier in many domains have now reduced to as low as 2-3 years. This is especially true for digital transformation technologies. In simple terms many skills can lose their value and become obsolete in much shorter durations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How can one use both the above ideas at an individual level? <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

We propose that it is very important to view Skills and Knowledge from both the perspectives of past CAGR and Half-Life which is in the future. As an engineer one can start by capturing the Portfolio of Skills and Knowledge<\/strong> that one possesses. Then one can do an analysis and develop a good understanding on which skills and knowledge in this portfolio. One also needs to be aware of which of the skills have accumulated value<\/strong> and have grown at a good rate. A particular skill or an industry specific knowledge can dramatically accumulate value when there is a surge in demand. More so some game changer ideas or technology<\/strong> can create such a surge. For example, in Digital Transformation<\/strong> - Smartphone apps led services, Smart Devices, Social Media led engagement, Cloud Enablement, Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to name a few.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the other hand, many skills are likely to erode in utility value<\/strong> as quantified by Half-Life<\/strong>. The half-life period would be a good point for a decision, to drop the skill from the portfolio sometime soon and potentially replace with another skill. This is irrespective of the time that has taken to accumulate the same. The half-life is generally determined by the rapidity of changes in that technology or industry domain. This may also be dependent upon the speed of changes and strategies pursued within a particular company. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is the implication for Organizations? <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

First it is about Enterprise Agility<\/strong> and how people are organized in terms of Agile Teams to adapt to the changes and continuously deliver customer value. Within teams, there is a need to have people with T-Shaped Skills<\/strong>. Each team member not only have deep skills in one or two areas but also have broad complementary skills to the extent practical \u2013 Portfolio of Skills<\/strong>. The leadership and management in organizations have to help team members in managing this portfolio and track both Half-Life <\/strong>and CAGR<\/strong>. The portfolio would also apply at the team and organization level. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then it is incumbent on leadership to continuously<\/strong> make investments on growing skills and knowledge <\/strong>and prune the eroding ones<\/strong>. At the same time, an individual has to embrace life-long learning to actively manage the portfolio. Some individuals might end up having a non-performing portfolio whereas some others may build a high-performing portfolio. A combined high-performing portfolio of Skills would benefit individuals, teams and organizations.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CAGR & Half-Life of Skills & Knowledge","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"cagr-half-life-of-skills-knowledge","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 12:41:21","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 12:41:21","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17980","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17570,"post_author":"10","post_date":"2020-11-23 18:23:20","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-23 12:53:20","post_content":"\n

In the last couple of weeks, I had some long phone conversations with a few of my old buddies. I had not spoken to them in several months. The COVID situation was helping to connect with many through video calls rather than just messages on social media. One of them works for a large engineering services organization. Two others are in R&D organizations. One thing that struck me was everybody was referring to one project or the other they were working on (in their workplace of course). So you might ask \"so what is the issue?\"<\/em><\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Project approach is most common<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Within most IT and R&D organization, people are used to being \u201cassigned\u201d to projects. Once they finish one a project, they move on to another. An engineer typically fills up a resume with major projects completed and contributions made. Strong project management practices have evolved to closely monitor individual tasks and resources (engineers and other materials). Project managers manage risks that could impact project completion and thereby its objectives. Funding is done for projects based on resources (both people and material). But, projects by definition are temporary in nature and this can drive thinking and decision making. Once Projects get closed most of the learnings too get wrapped up. So is there a better way to organize?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Transition from Project thinking to Product Thinking<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

As part of Lean-Agile transformation,<\/strong> one of the foundation principles we convey is Product Thinking <\/strong>and Long-term Stable Teams.<\/strong> A department and in turn a larger organization should ideally be an aggregation of carefully designed teams each with a manageable size of members having requisite skills. Product thinking is about slices of customer value rather than set of project work<\/em><\/strong> packages. Product work gets assigned to teams as opposed to an individual getting assigned work. All work is then accomplished collectively by the members as one team<\/strong>. Product by nature lasts longer till it loses its utility value. So long-term stable teams and product thinking will allow members to be invested in their team identity, evolve team norms and practices and become high performing over a period of time. Customer value gets delivered over a longer period of time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continuous Improvement<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Once there is a long-term mindset, it enables Continuous Improvement<\/strong>, which is the next foundation element of Lean-Agile thinking. The teams will be able to develop a systematic understanding of the current state of performance indicators. They get time to carefully think of any improvements and can implement the same so that performance remains stable and also can improve. They can set standards and practices to ensure stability. It is difficult to imagine how this can happen in a temporary project setup where the key objective is to finish a project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Talk to us if you are wondering how Lean-Agile transformation can change Projects based organization? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

#ProjectToProduct, #ProductThinking, #OrganizeAroundValue, #ContinuousImprovement, #LongtermStableTeams<\/p>\n","post_title":"Lean-Agile in Projects Organization \u2013 is it oil in water?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"17570-2","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 13:08:07","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 13:08:07","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17570","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":2},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 2 of 2 1 2
\n

CAGR of Skills<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

An engineer or a manager possesses many skills and knowledge to perform on the job. These are dependent upon the technology and industry domain. Normally most engineers are used to seeing Growth<\/strong> in their skills. There is an assumption that Value always increases<\/strong>, hence relatable to CAGR. It is a commonly used term in business to denote the growth of any phenomenon. Examples could be for revenue, unit sales or number of users. The number indicates the constant rate of growth that would take a starting value to an ending value over a particular duration. For the purposes of this article, we use CAGR to capture past data, though it can also be used for forecasts. Over a period of an engineer's work life, due to experience and application, certain skills and knowledge grow in utility value<\/strong>. Every individual wishes to grow this utility value at a high rate. An individual's investment on honing the same determines the growth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Half-Life of Skills<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Now let us look at Decay. Half-Life<\/strong> was originally used in Nuclear Physics, which is the time required for a quantity to reduce to half of its initial value. The term describes how quickly unstable atoms undergo radioactive decay or how long stable atoms survive (https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Half-life). However, for our purpose, we can generalize this concept to describe any phenomenon where \u201cOver what duration a utility value or worth decreases by Half\u201d<\/strong>. Contrary to what an engineer wishes, Skills and Knowledge also Decay over time. Most often the market and industry conditions determines this decay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Variety of Skills<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

We can apply this phenomenon to any of the skills and knowledge. Usage of certain tools, skills in specific technologies, practices like critical thinking, problem solving, communication, best practices & lessons learnt, industry or domain specific nuances or transfer learning from one domain to another are all good examples of skill and knowledge. Some Emotional Quotient (EQ) related competencies can also qualify for this category. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We then can categorize these skills and knowledge and put side by side the CAGR and an estimate their Half-Life. The utility value diminishes on account of obsolescence or disruptions in the domain with entry of new ones. While one might have a spent long time in accumulating certain skills, they might lose their significance over a short period of time due to lack of application. What used to be Half-life of 5-6 years for technologies and skills earlier in many domains have now reduced to as low as 2-3 years. This is especially true for digital transformation technologies. In simple terms many skills can lose their value and become obsolete in much shorter durations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How can one use both the above ideas at an individual level? <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

We propose that it is very important to view Skills and Knowledge from both the perspectives of past CAGR and Half-Life which is in the future. As an engineer one can start by capturing the Portfolio of Skills and Knowledge<\/strong> that one possesses. Then one can do an analysis and develop a good understanding on which skills and knowledge in this portfolio. One also needs to be aware of which of the skills have accumulated value<\/strong> and have grown at a good rate. A particular skill or an industry specific knowledge can dramatically accumulate value when there is a surge in demand. More so some game changer ideas or technology<\/strong> can create such a surge. For example, in Digital Transformation<\/strong> - Smartphone apps led services, Smart Devices, Social Media led engagement, Cloud Enablement, Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to name a few.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the other hand, many skills are likely to erode in utility value<\/strong> as quantified by Half-Life<\/strong>. The half-life period would be a good point for a decision, to drop the skill from the portfolio sometime soon and potentially replace with another skill. This is irrespective of the time that has taken to accumulate the same. The half-life is generally determined by the rapidity of changes in that technology or industry domain. This may also be dependent upon the speed of changes and strategies pursued within a particular company. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is the implication for Organizations? <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

First it is about Enterprise Agility<\/strong> and how people are organized in terms of Agile Teams to adapt to the changes and continuously deliver customer value. Within teams, there is a need to have people with T-Shaped Skills<\/strong>. Each team member not only have deep skills in one or two areas but also have broad complementary skills to the extent practical \u2013 Portfolio of Skills<\/strong>. The leadership and management in organizations have to help team members in managing this portfolio and track both Half-Life <\/strong>and CAGR<\/strong>. The portfolio would also apply at the team and organization level. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then it is incumbent on leadership to continuously<\/strong> make investments on growing skills and knowledge <\/strong>and prune the eroding ones<\/strong>. At the same time, an individual has to embrace life-long learning to actively manage the portfolio. Some individuals might end up having a non-performing portfolio whereas some others may build a high-performing portfolio. A combined high-performing portfolio of Skills would benefit individuals, teams and organizations.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CAGR & Half-Life of Skills & Knowledge","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"cagr-half-life-of-skills-knowledge","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 12:41:21","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 12:41:21","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17980","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17570,"post_author":"10","post_date":"2020-11-23 18:23:20","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-23 12:53:20","post_content":"\n

In the last couple of weeks, I had some long phone conversations with a few of my old buddies. I had not spoken to them in several months. The COVID situation was helping to connect with many through video calls rather than just messages on social media. One of them works for a large engineering services organization. Two others are in R&D organizations. One thing that struck me was everybody was referring to one project or the other they were working on (in their workplace of course). So you might ask \"so what is the issue?\"<\/em><\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Project approach is most common<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Within most IT and R&D organization, people are used to being \u201cassigned\u201d to projects. Once they finish one a project, they move on to another. An engineer typically fills up a resume with major projects completed and contributions made. Strong project management practices have evolved to closely monitor individual tasks and resources (engineers and other materials). Project managers manage risks that could impact project completion and thereby its objectives. Funding is done for projects based on resources (both people and material). But, projects by definition are temporary in nature and this can drive thinking and decision making. Once Projects get closed most of the learnings too get wrapped up. So is there a better way to organize?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Transition from Project thinking to Product Thinking<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

As part of Lean-Agile transformation,<\/strong> one of the foundation principles we convey is Product Thinking <\/strong>and Long-term Stable Teams.<\/strong> A department and in turn a larger organization should ideally be an aggregation of carefully designed teams each with a manageable size of members having requisite skills. Product thinking is about slices of customer value rather than set of project work<\/em><\/strong> packages. Product work gets assigned to teams as opposed to an individual getting assigned work. All work is then accomplished collectively by the members as one team<\/strong>. Product by nature lasts longer till it loses its utility value. So long-term stable teams and product thinking will allow members to be invested in their team identity, evolve team norms and practices and become high performing over a period of time. Customer value gets delivered over a longer period of time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continuous Improvement<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Once there is a long-term mindset, it enables Continuous Improvement<\/strong>, which is the next foundation element of Lean-Agile thinking. The teams will be able to develop a systematic understanding of the current state of performance indicators. They get time to carefully think of any improvements and can implement the same so that performance remains stable and also can improve. They can set standards and practices to ensure stability. It is difficult to imagine how this can happen in a temporary project setup where the key objective is to finish a project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Talk to us if you are wondering how Lean-Agile transformation can change Projects based organization? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

#ProjectToProduct, #ProductThinking, #OrganizeAroundValue, #ContinuousImprovement, #LongtermStableTeams<\/p>\n","post_title":"Lean-Agile in Projects Organization \u2013 is it oil in water?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"17570-2","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 13:08:07","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 13:08:07","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17570","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":2},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 2 of 2 1 2
\n

How does it apply to Engineering Organizations?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

CAGR of Skills<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

An engineer or a manager possesses many skills and knowledge to perform on the job. These are dependent upon the technology and industry domain. Normally most engineers are used to seeing Growth<\/strong> in their skills. There is an assumption that Value always increases<\/strong>, hence relatable to CAGR. It is a commonly used term in business to denote the growth of any phenomenon. Examples could be for revenue, unit sales or number of users. The number indicates the constant rate of growth that would take a starting value to an ending value over a particular duration. For the purposes of this article, we use CAGR to capture past data, though it can also be used for forecasts. Over a period of an engineer's work life, due to experience and application, certain skills and knowledge grow in utility value<\/strong>. Every individual wishes to grow this utility value at a high rate. An individual's investment on honing the same determines the growth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Half-Life of Skills<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Now let us look at Decay. Half-Life<\/strong> was originally used in Nuclear Physics, which is the time required for a quantity to reduce to half of its initial value. The term describes how quickly unstable atoms undergo radioactive decay or how long stable atoms survive (https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Half-life). However, for our purpose, we can generalize this concept to describe any phenomenon where \u201cOver what duration a utility value or worth decreases by Half\u201d<\/strong>. Contrary to what an engineer wishes, Skills and Knowledge also Decay over time. Most often the market and industry conditions determines this decay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Variety of Skills<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

We can apply this phenomenon to any of the skills and knowledge. Usage of certain tools, skills in specific technologies, practices like critical thinking, problem solving, communication, best practices & lessons learnt, industry or domain specific nuances or transfer learning from one domain to another are all good examples of skill and knowledge. Some Emotional Quotient (EQ) related competencies can also qualify for this category. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We then can categorize these skills and knowledge and put side by side the CAGR and an estimate their Half-Life. The utility value diminishes on account of obsolescence or disruptions in the domain with entry of new ones. While one might have a spent long time in accumulating certain skills, they might lose their significance over a short period of time due to lack of application. What used to be Half-life of 5-6 years for technologies and skills earlier in many domains have now reduced to as low as 2-3 years. This is especially true for digital transformation technologies. In simple terms many skills can lose their value and become obsolete in much shorter durations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How can one use both the above ideas at an individual level? <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

We propose that it is very important to view Skills and Knowledge from both the perspectives of past CAGR and Half-Life which is in the future. As an engineer one can start by capturing the Portfolio of Skills and Knowledge<\/strong> that one possesses. Then one can do an analysis and develop a good understanding on which skills and knowledge in this portfolio. One also needs to be aware of which of the skills have accumulated value<\/strong> and have grown at a good rate. A particular skill or an industry specific knowledge can dramatically accumulate value when there is a surge in demand. More so some game changer ideas or technology<\/strong> can create such a surge. For example, in Digital Transformation<\/strong> - Smartphone apps led services, Smart Devices, Social Media led engagement, Cloud Enablement, Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to name a few.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the other hand, many skills are likely to erode in utility value<\/strong> as quantified by Half-Life<\/strong>. The half-life period would be a good point for a decision, to drop the skill from the portfolio sometime soon and potentially replace with another skill. This is irrespective of the time that has taken to accumulate the same. The half-life is generally determined by the rapidity of changes in that technology or industry domain. This may also be dependent upon the speed of changes and strategies pursued within a particular company. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is the implication for Organizations? <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

First it is about Enterprise Agility<\/strong> and how people are organized in terms of Agile Teams to adapt to the changes and continuously deliver customer value. Within teams, there is a need to have people with T-Shaped Skills<\/strong>. Each team member not only have deep skills in one or two areas but also have broad complementary skills to the extent practical \u2013 Portfolio of Skills<\/strong>. The leadership and management in organizations have to help team members in managing this portfolio and track both Half-Life <\/strong>and CAGR<\/strong>. The portfolio would also apply at the team and organization level. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then it is incumbent on leadership to continuously<\/strong> make investments on growing skills and knowledge <\/strong>and prune the eroding ones<\/strong>. At the same time, an individual has to embrace life-long learning to actively manage the portfolio. Some individuals might end up having a non-performing portfolio whereas some others may build a high-performing portfolio. A combined high-performing portfolio of Skills would benefit individuals, teams and organizations.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CAGR & Half-Life of Skills & Knowledge","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"cagr-half-life-of-skills-knowledge","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 12:41:21","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 12:41:21","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17980","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17570,"post_author":"10","post_date":"2020-11-23 18:23:20","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-23 12:53:20","post_content":"\n

In the last couple of weeks, I had some long phone conversations with a few of my old buddies. I had not spoken to them in several months. The COVID situation was helping to connect with many through video calls rather than just messages on social media. One of them works for a large engineering services organization. Two others are in R&D organizations. One thing that struck me was everybody was referring to one project or the other they were working on (in their workplace of course). So you might ask \"so what is the issue?\"<\/em><\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Project approach is most common<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Within most IT and R&D organization, people are used to being \u201cassigned\u201d to projects. Once they finish one a project, they move on to another. An engineer typically fills up a resume with major projects completed and contributions made. Strong project management practices have evolved to closely monitor individual tasks and resources (engineers and other materials). Project managers manage risks that could impact project completion and thereby its objectives. Funding is done for projects based on resources (both people and material). But, projects by definition are temporary in nature and this can drive thinking and decision making. Once Projects get closed most of the learnings too get wrapped up. So is there a better way to organize?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Transition from Project thinking to Product Thinking<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

As part of Lean-Agile transformation,<\/strong> one of the foundation principles we convey is Product Thinking <\/strong>and Long-term Stable Teams.<\/strong> A department and in turn a larger organization should ideally be an aggregation of carefully designed teams each with a manageable size of members having requisite skills. Product thinking is about slices of customer value rather than set of project work<\/em><\/strong> packages. Product work gets assigned to teams as opposed to an individual getting assigned work. All work is then accomplished collectively by the members as one team<\/strong>. Product by nature lasts longer till it loses its utility value. So long-term stable teams and product thinking will allow members to be invested in their team identity, evolve team norms and practices and become high performing over a period of time. Customer value gets delivered over a longer period of time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continuous Improvement<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Once there is a long-term mindset, it enables Continuous Improvement<\/strong>, which is the next foundation element of Lean-Agile thinking. The teams will be able to develop a systematic understanding of the current state of performance indicators. They get time to carefully think of any improvements and can implement the same so that performance remains stable and also can improve. They can set standards and practices to ensure stability. It is difficult to imagine how this can happen in a temporary project setup where the key objective is to finish a project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Talk to us if you are wondering how Lean-Agile transformation can change Projects based organization? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

#ProjectToProduct, #ProductThinking, #OrganizeAroundValue, #ContinuousImprovement, #LongtermStableTeams<\/p>\n","post_title":"Lean-Agile in Projects Organization \u2013 is it oil in water?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"17570-2","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 13:08:07","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 13:08:07","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17570","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":2},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 2 of 2 1 2
\n

Recently I had a chance to be on a panel discussion on the theme of Digital Transformation<\/strong>. As we were discussing, one our panel members mentioned about \u201cHalf-Life\u201d of Skills <\/strong>in today\u2019s fast-paced technology world. It aroused my curiosity as I thought that it is an interesting concept to apply for Skills. We did a bit of research on this and found several extremely interesting articles. We want to tie two ideas here one related to Growth<\/strong> through the concept of Compounded Annual Growth Rate (CAGR)<\/strong> and the other related to Decay<\/strong> using the concept of Half-Life<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How does it apply to Engineering Organizations?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

CAGR of Skills<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

An engineer or a manager possesses many skills and knowledge to perform on the job. These are dependent upon the technology and industry domain. Normally most engineers are used to seeing Growth<\/strong> in their skills. There is an assumption that Value always increases<\/strong>, hence relatable to CAGR. It is a commonly used term in business to denote the growth of any phenomenon. Examples could be for revenue, unit sales or number of users. The number indicates the constant rate of growth that would take a starting value to an ending value over a particular duration. For the purposes of this article, we use CAGR to capture past data, though it can also be used for forecasts. Over a period of an engineer's work life, due to experience and application, certain skills and knowledge grow in utility value<\/strong>. Every individual wishes to grow this utility value at a high rate. An individual's investment on honing the same determines the growth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Half-Life of Skills<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Now let us look at Decay. Half-Life<\/strong> was originally used in Nuclear Physics, which is the time required for a quantity to reduce to half of its initial value. The term describes how quickly unstable atoms undergo radioactive decay or how long stable atoms survive (https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Half-life). However, for our purpose, we can generalize this concept to describe any phenomenon where \u201cOver what duration a utility value or worth decreases by Half\u201d<\/strong>. Contrary to what an engineer wishes, Skills and Knowledge also Decay over time. Most often the market and industry conditions determines this decay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Variety of Skills<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

We can apply this phenomenon to any of the skills and knowledge. Usage of certain tools, skills in specific technologies, practices like critical thinking, problem solving, communication, best practices & lessons learnt, industry or domain specific nuances or transfer learning from one domain to another are all good examples of skill and knowledge. Some Emotional Quotient (EQ) related competencies can also qualify for this category. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We then can categorize these skills and knowledge and put side by side the CAGR and an estimate their Half-Life. The utility value diminishes on account of obsolescence or disruptions in the domain with entry of new ones. While one might have a spent long time in accumulating certain skills, they might lose their significance over a short period of time due to lack of application. What used to be Half-life of 5-6 years for technologies and skills earlier in many domains have now reduced to as low as 2-3 years. This is especially true for digital transformation technologies. In simple terms many skills can lose their value and become obsolete in much shorter durations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How can one use both the above ideas at an individual level? <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

We propose that it is very important to view Skills and Knowledge from both the perspectives of past CAGR and Half-Life which is in the future. As an engineer one can start by capturing the Portfolio of Skills and Knowledge<\/strong> that one possesses. Then one can do an analysis and develop a good understanding on which skills and knowledge in this portfolio. One also needs to be aware of which of the skills have accumulated value<\/strong> and have grown at a good rate. A particular skill or an industry specific knowledge can dramatically accumulate value when there is a surge in demand. More so some game changer ideas or technology<\/strong> can create such a surge. For example, in Digital Transformation<\/strong> - Smartphone apps led services, Smart Devices, Social Media led engagement, Cloud Enablement, Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to name a few.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the other hand, many skills are likely to erode in utility value<\/strong> as quantified by Half-Life<\/strong>. The half-life period would be a good point for a decision, to drop the skill from the portfolio sometime soon and potentially replace with another skill. This is irrespective of the time that has taken to accumulate the same. The half-life is generally determined by the rapidity of changes in that technology or industry domain. This may also be dependent upon the speed of changes and strategies pursued within a particular company. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is the implication for Organizations? <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

First it is about Enterprise Agility<\/strong> and how people are organized in terms of Agile Teams to adapt to the changes and continuously deliver customer value. Within teams, there is a need to have people with T-Shaped Skills<\/strong>. Each team member not only have deep skills in one or two areas but also have broad complementary skills to the extent practical \u2013 Portfolio of Skills<\/strong>. The leadership and management in organizations have to help team members in managing this portfolio and track both Half-Life <\/strong>and CAGR<\/strong>. The portfolio would also apply at the team and organization level. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then it is incumbent on leadership to continuously<\/strong> make investments on growing skills and knowledge <\/strong>and prune the eroding ones<\/strong>. At the same time, an individual has to embrace life-long learning to actively manage the portfolio. Some individuals might end up having a non-performing portfolio whereas some others may build a high-performing portfolio. A combined high-performing portfolio of Skills would benefit individuals, teams and organizations.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CAGR & Half-Life of Skills & Knowledge","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"cagr-half-life-of-skills-knowledge","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 12:41:21","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 12:41:21","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17980","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17570,"post_author":"10","post_date":"2020-11-23 18:23:20","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-23 12:53:20","post_content":"\n

In the last couple of weeks, I had some long phone conversations with a few of my old buddies. I had not spoken to them in several months. The COVID situation was helping to connect with many through video calls rather than just messages on social media. One of them works for a large engineering services organization. Two others are in R&D organizations. One thing that struck me was everybody was referring to one project or the other they were working on (in their workplace of course). So you might ask \"so what is the issue?\"<\/em><\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Project approach is most common<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Within most IT and R&D organization, people are used to being \u201cassigned\u201d to projects. Once they finish one a project, they move on to another. An engineer typically fills up a resume with major projects completed and contributions made. Strong project management practices have evolved to closely monitor individual tasks and resources (engineers and other materials). Project managers manage risks that could impact project completion and thereby its objectives. Funding is done for projects based on resources (both people and material). But, projects by definition are temporary in nature and this can drive thinking and decision making. Once Projects get closed most of the learnings too get wrapped up. So is there a better way to organize?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Transition from Project thinking to Product Thinking<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

As part of Lean-Agile transformation,<\/strong> one of the foundation principles we convey is Product Thinking <\/strong>and Long-term Stable Teams.<\/strong> A department and in turn a larger organization should ideally be an aggregation of carefully designed teams each with a manageable size of members having requisite skills. Product thinking is about slices of customer value rather than set of project work<\/em><\/strong> packages. Product work gets assigned to teams as opposed to an individual getting assigned work. All work is then accomplished collectively by the members as one team<\/strong>. Product by nature lasts longer till it loses its utility value. So long-term stable teams and product thinking will allow members to be invested in their team identity, evolve team norms and practices and become high performing over a period of time. Customer value gets delivered over a longer period of time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continuous Improvement<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Once there is a long-term mindset, it enables Continuous Improvement<\/strong>, which is the next foundation element of Lean-Agile thinking. The teams will be able to develop a systematic understanding of the current state of performance indicators. They get time to carefully think of any improvements and can implement the same so that performance remains stable and also can improve. They can set standards and practices to ensure stability. It is difficult to imagine how this can happen in a temporary project setup where the key objective is to finish a project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Talk to us if you are wondering how Lean-Agile transformation can change Projects based organization? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

#ProjectToProduct, #ProductThinking, #OrganizeAroundValue, #ContinuousImprovement, #LongtermStableTeams<\/p>\n","post_title":"Lean-Agile in Projects Organization \u2013 is it oil in water?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"17570-2","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 13:08:07","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 13:08:07","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17570","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":2},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 2 of 2 1 2
\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW # 230 - How to deal with Half-Life of Skills?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-230-how-to-deal-with-half-life-of-skills","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 13:07:30","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 13:07:30","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17985","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17980,"post_author":"10","post_date":"2021-01-13 09:43:04","post_date_gmt":"2021-01-13 04:13:04","post_content":"\n

Recently I had a chance to be on a panel discussion on the theme of Digital Transformation<\/strong>. As we were discussing, one our panel members mentioned about \u201cHalf-Life\u201d of Skills <\/strong>in today\u2019s fast-paced technology world. It aroused my curiosity as I thought that it is an interesting concept to apply for Skills. We did a bit of research on this and found several extremely interesting articles. We want to tie two ideas here one related to Growth<\/strong> through the concept of Compounded Annual Growth Rate (CAGR)<\/strong> and the other related to Decay<\/strong> using the concept of Half-Life<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How does it apply to Engineering Organizations?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

CAGR of Skills<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

An engineer or a manager possesses many skills and knowledge to perform on the job. These are dependent upon the technology and industry domain. Normally most engineers are used to seeing Growth<\/strong> in their skills. There is an assumption that Value always increases<\/strong>, hence relatable to CAGR. It is a commonly used term in business to denote the growth of any phenomenon. Examples could be for revenue, unit sales or number of users. The number indicates the constant rate of growth that would take a starting value to an ending value over a particular duration. For the purposes of this article, we use CAGR to capture past data, though it can also be used for forecasts. Over a period of an engineer's work life, due to experience and application, certain skills and knowledge grow in utility value<\/strong>. Every individual wishes to grow this utility value at a high rate. An individual's investment on honing the same determines the growth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Half-Life of Skills<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Now let us look at Decay. Half-Life<\/strong> was originally used in Nuclear Physics, which is the time required for a quantity to reduce to half of its initial value. The term describes how quickly unstable atoms undergo radioactive decay or how long stable atoms survive (https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Half-life). However, for our purpose, we can generalize this concept to describe any phenomenon where \u201cOver what duration a utility value or worth decreases by Half\u201d<\/strong>. Contrary to what an engineer wishes, Skills and Knowledge also Decay over time. Most often the market and industry conditions determines this decay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Variety of Skills<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

We can apply this phenomenon to any of the skills and knowledge. Usage of certain tools, skills in specific technologies, practices like critical thinking, problem solving, communication, best practices & lessons learnt, industry or domain specific nuances or transfer learning from one domain to another are all good examples of skill and knowledge. Some Emotional Quotient (EQ) related competencies can also qualify for this category. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We then can categorize these skills and knowledge and put side by side the CAGR and an estimate their Half-Life. The utility value diminishes on account of obsolescence or disruptions in the domain with entry of new ones. While one might have a spent long time in accumulating certain skills, they might lose their significance over a short period of time due to lack of application. What used to be Half-life of 5-6 years for technologies and skills earlier in many domains have now reduced to as low as 2-3 years. This is especially true for digital transformation technologies. In simple terms many skills can lose their value and become obsolete in much shorter durations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How can one use both the above ideas at an individual level? <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

We propose that it is very important to view Skills and Knowledge from both the perspectives of past CAGR and Half-Life which is in the future. As an engineer one can start by capturing the Portfolio of Skills and Knowledge<\/strong> that one possesses. Then one can do an analysis and develop a good understanding on which skills and knowledge in this portfolio. One also needs to be aware of which of the skills have accumulated value<\/strong> and have grown at a good rate. A particular skill or an industry specific knowledge can dramatically accumulate value when there is a surge in demand. More so some game changer ideas or technology<\/strong> can create such a surge. For example, in Digital Transformation<\/strong> - Smartphone apps led services, Smart Devices, Social Media led engagement, Cloud Enablement, Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to name a few.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the other hand, many skills are likely to erode in utility value<\/strong> as quantified by Half-Life<\/strong>. The half-life period would be a good point for a decision, to drop the skill from the portfolio sometime soon and potentially replace with another skill. This is irrespective of the time that has taken to accumulate the same. The half-life is generally determined by the rapidity of changes in that technology or industry domain. This may also be dependent upon the speed of changes and strategies pursued within a particular company. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is the implication for Organizations? <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

First it is about Enterprise Agility<\/strong> and how people are organized in terms of Agile Teams to adapt to the changes and continuously deliver customer value. Within teams, there is a need to have people with T-Shaped Skills<\/strong>. Each team member not only have deep skills in one or two areas but also have broad complementary skills to the extent practical \u2013 Portfolio of Skills<\/strong>. The leadership and management in organizations have to help team members in managing this portfolio and track both Half-Life <\/strong>and CAGR<\/strong>. The portfolio would also apply at the team and organization level. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then it is incumbent on leadership to continuously<\/strong> make investments on growing skills and knowledge <\/strong>and prune the eroding ones<\/strong>. At the same time, an individual has to embrace life-long learning to actively manage the portfolio. Some individuals might end up having a non-performing portfolio whereas some others may build a high-performing portfolio. A combined high-performing portfolio of Skills would benefit individuals, teams and organizations.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CAGR & Half-Life of Skills & Knowledge","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"cagr-half-life-of-skills-knowledge","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 12:41:21","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 12:41:21","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17980","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17570,"post_author":"10","post_date":"2020-11-23 18:23:20","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-23 12:53:20","post_content":"\n

In the last couple of weeks, I had some long phone conversations with a few of my old buddies. I had not spoken to them in several months. The COVID situation was helping to connect with many through video calls rather than just messages on social media. One of them works for a large engineering services organization. Two others are in R&D organizations. One thing that struck me was everybody was referring to one project or the other they were working on (in their workplace of course). So you might ask \"so what is the issue?\"<\/em><\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Project approach is most common<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Within most IT and R&D organization, people are used to being \u201cassigned\u201d to projects. Once they finish one a project, they move on to another. An engineer typically fills up a resume with major projects completed and contributions made. Strong project management practices have evolved to closely monitor individual tasks and resources (engineers and other materials). Project managers manage risks that could impact project completion and thereby its objectives. Funding is done for projects based on resources (both people and material). But, projects by definition are temporary in nature and this can drive thinking and decision making. Once Projects get closed most of the learnings too get wrapped up. So is there a better way to organize?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Transition from Project thinking to Product Thinking<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

As part of Lean-Agile transformation,<\/strong> one of the foundation principles we convey is Product Thinking <\/strong>and Long-term Stable Teams.<\/strong> A department and in turn a larger organization should ideally be an aggregation of carefully designed teams each with a manageable size of members having requisite skills. Product thinking is about slices of customer value rather than set of project work<\/em><\/strong> packages. Product work gets assigned to teams as opposed to an individual getting assigned work. All work is then accomplished collectively by the members as one team<\/strong>. Product by nature lasts longer till it loses its utility value. So long-term stable teams and product thinking will allow members to be invested in their team identity, evolve team norms and practices and become high performing over a period of time. Customer value gets delivered over a longer period of time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continuous Improvement<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Once there is a long-term mindset, it enables Continuous Improvement<\/strong>, which is the next foundation element of Lean-Agile thinking. The teams will be able to develop a systematic understanding of the current state of performance indicators. They get time to carefully think of any improvements and can implement the same so that performance remains stable and also can improve. They can set standards and practices to ensure stability. It is difficult to imagine how this can happen in a temporary project setup where the key objective is to finish a project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Talk to us if you are wondering how Lean-Agile transformation can change Projects based organization? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

#ProjectToProduct, #ProductThinking, #OrganizeAroundValue, #ContinuousImprovement, #LongtermStableTeams<\/p>\n","post_title":"Lean-Agile in Projects Organization \u2013 is it oil in water?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"17570-2","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 13:08:07","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 13:08:07","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17570","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":2},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 2 of 2 1 2
\n

There is one other action which Srinivas should immediately take:
Re-Organize his Agile Teams with a better mix
of engineers with different technology skills. Engineers in each of the teams will
have T-Shaped skills rather than one specialization. This way the teams and
hence members are better prepared for adaptation to emerging technologies<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW # 230 - How to deal with Half-Life of Skills?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-230-how-to-deal-with-half-life-of-skills","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 13:07:30","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 13:07:30","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17985","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17980,"post_author":"10","post_date":"2021-01-13 09:43:04","post_date_gmt":"2021-01-13 04:13:04","post_content":"\n

Recently I had a chance to be on a panel discussion on the theme of Digital Transformation<\/strong>. As we were discussing, one our panel members mentioned about \u201cHalf-Life\u201d of Skills <\/strong>in today\u2019s fast-paced technology world. It aroused my curiosity as I thought that it is an interesting concept to apply for Skills. We did a bit of research on this and found several extremely interesting articles. We want to tie two ideas here one related to Growth<\/strong> through the concept of Compounded Annual Growth Rate (CAGR)<\/strong> and the other related to Decay<\/strong> using the concept of Half-Life<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How does it apply to Engineering Organizations?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

CAGR of Skills<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

An engineer or a manager possesses many skills and knowledge to perform on the job. These are dependent upon the technology and industry domain. Normally most engineers are used to seeing Growth<\/strong> in their skills. There is an assumption that Value always increases<\/strong>, hence relatable to CAGR. It is a commonly used term in business to denote the growth of any phenomenon. Examples could be for revenue, unit sales or number of users. The number indicates the constant rate of growth that would take a starting value to an ending value over a particular duration. For the purposes of this article, we use CAGR to capture past data, though it can also be used for forecasts. Over a period of an engineer's work life, due to experience and application, certain skills and knowledge grow in utility value<\/strong>. Every individual wishes to grow this utility value at a high rate. An individual's investment on honing the same determines the growth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Half-Life of Skills<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Now let us look at Decay. Half-Life<\/strong> was originally used in Nuclear Physics, which is the time required for a quantity to reduce to half of its initial value. The term describes how quickly unstable atoms undergo radioactive decay or how long stable atoms survive (https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Half-life). However, for our purpose, we can generalize this concept to describe any phenomenon where \u201cOver what duration a utility value or worth decreases by Half\u201d<\/strong>. Contrary to what an engineer wishes, Skills and Knowledge also Decay over time. Most often the market and industry conditions determines this decay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Variety of Skills<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

We can apply this phenomenon to any of the skills and knowledge. Usage of certain tools, skills in specific technologies, practices like critical thinking, problem solving, communication, best practices & lessons learnt, industry or domain specific nuances or transfer learning from one domain to another are all good examples of skill and knowledge. Some Emotional Quotient (EQ) related competencies can also qualify for this category. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We then can categorize these skills and knowledge and put side by side the CAGR and an estimate their Half-Life. The utility value diminishes on account of obsolescence or disruptions in the domain with entry of new ones. While one might have a spent long time in accumulating certain skills, they might lose their significance over a short period of time due to lack of application. What used to be Half-life of 5-6 years for technologies and skills earlier in many domains have now reduced to as low as 2-3 years. This is especially true for digital transformation technologies. In simple terms many skills can lose their value and become obsolete in much shorter durations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How can one use both the above ideas at an individual level? <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

We propose that it is very important to view Skills and Knowledge from both the perspectives of past CAGR and Half-Life which is in the future. As an engineer one can start by capturing the Portfolio of Skills and Knowledge<\/strong> that one possesses. Then one can do an analysis and develop a good understanding on which skills and knowledge in this portfolio. One also needs to be aware of which of the skills have accumulated value<\/strong> and have grown at a good rate. A particular skill or an industry specific knowledge can dramatically accumulate value when there is a surge in demand. More so some game changer ideas or technology<\/strong> can create such a surge. For example, in Digital Transformation<\/strong> - Smartphone apps led services, Smart Devices, Social Media led engagement, Cloud Enablement, Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to name a few.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the other hand, many skills are likely to erode in utility value<\/strong> as quantified by Half-Life<\/strong>. The half-life period would be a good point for a decision, to drop the skill from the portfolio sometime soon and potentially replace with another skill. This is irrespective of the time that has taken to accumulate the same. The half-life is generally determined by the rapidity of changes in that technology or industry domain. This may also be dependent upon the speed of changes and strategies pursued within a particular company. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is the implication for Organizations? <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

First it is about Enterprise Agility<\/strong> and how people are organized in terms of Agile Teams to adapt to the changes and continuously deliver customer value. Within teams, there is a need to have people with T-Shaped Skills<\/strong>. Each team member not only have deep skills in one or two areas but also have broad complementary skills to the extent practical \u2013 Portfolio of Skills<\/strong>. The leadership and management in organizations have to help team members in managing this portfolio and track both Half-Life <\/strong>and CAGR<\/strong>. The portfolio would also apply at the team and organization level. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then it is incumbent on leadership to continuously<\/strong> make investments on growing skills and knowledge <\/strong>and prune the eroding ones<\/strong>. At the same time, an individual has to embrace life-long learning to actively manage the portfolio. Some individuals might end up having a non-performing portfolio whereas some others may build a high-performing portfolio. A combined high-performing portfolio of Skills would benefit individuals, teams and organizations.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CAGR & Half-Life of Skills & Knowledge","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"cagr-half-life-of-skills-knowledge","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 12:41:21","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 12:41:21","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17980","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17570,"post_author":"10","post_date":"2020-11-23 18:23:20","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-23 12:53:20","post_content":"\n

In the last couple of weeks, I had some long phone conversations with a few of my old buddies. I had not spoken to them in several months. The COVID situation was helping to connect with many through video calls rather than just messages on social media. One of them works for a large engineering services organization. Two others are in R&D organizations. One thing that struck me was everybody was referring to one project or the other they were working on (in their workplace of course). So you might ask \"so what is the issue?\"<\/em><\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Project approach is most common<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Within most IT and R&D organization, people are used to being \u201cassigned\u201d to projects. Once they finish one a project, they move on to another. An engineer typically fills up a resume with major projects completed and contributions made. Strong project management practices have evolved to closely monitor individual tasks and resources (engineers and other materials). Project managers manage risks that could impact project completion and thereby its objectives. Funding is done for projects based on resources (both people and material). But, projects by definition are temporary in nature and this can drive thinking and decision making. Once Projects get closed most of the learnings too get wrapped up. So is there a better way to organize?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Transition from Project thinking to Product Thinking<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

As part of Lean-Agile transformation,<\/strong> one of the foundation principles we convey is Product Thinking <\/strong>and Long-term Stable Teams.<\/strong> A department and in turn a larger organization should ideally be an aggregation of carefully designed teams each with a manageable size of members having requisite skills. Product thinking is about slices of customer value rather than set of project work<\/em><\/strong> packages. Product work gets assigned to teams as opposed to an individual getting assigned work. All work is then accomplished collectively by the members as one team<\/strong>. Product by nature lasts longer till it loses its utility value. So long-term stable teams and product thinking will allow members to be invested in their team identity, evolve team norms and practices and become high performing over a period of time. Customer value gets delivered over a longer period of time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continuous Improvement<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Once there is a long-term mindset, it enables Continuous Improvement<\/strong>, which is the next foundation element of Lean-Agile thinking. The teams will be able to develop a systematic understanding of the current state of performance indicators. They get time to carefully think of any improvements and can implement the same so that performance remains stable and also can improve. They can set standards and practices to ensure stability. It is difficult to imagine how this can happen in a temporary project setup where the key objective is to finish a project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Talk to us if you are wondering how Lean-Agile transformation can change Projects based organization? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

#ProjectToProduct, #ProductThinking, #OrganizeAroundValue, #ContinuousImprovement, #LongtermStableTeams<\/p>\n","post_title":"Lean-Agile in Projects Organization \u2013 is it oil in water?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"17570-2","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 13:08:07","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 13:08:07","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17570","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":2},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 2 of 2 1 2
\n

Note*: The Technologies named have respective trademarks and the numbers in the table shown are for discussion purposes only.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is one other action which Srinivas should immediately take:
Re-Organize his Agile Teams with a better mix
of engineers with different technology skills. Engineers in each of the teams will
have T-Shaped skills rather than one specialization. This way the teams and
hence members are better prepared for adaptation to emerging technologies<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW # 230 - How to deal with Half-Life of Skills?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-230-how-to-deal-with-half-life-of-skills","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 13:07:30","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 13:07:30","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17985","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17980,"post_author":"10","post_date":"2021-01-13 09:43:04","post_date_gmt":"2021-01-13 04:13:04","post_content":"\n

Recently I had a chance to be on a panel discussion on the theme of Digital Transformation<\/strong>. As we were discussing, one our panel members mentioned about \u201cHalf-Life\u201d of Skills <\/strong>in today\u2019s fast-paced technology world. It aroused my curiosity as I thought that it is an interesting concept to apply for Skills. We did a bit of research on this and found several extremely interesting articles. We want to tie two ideas here one related to Growth<\/strong> through the concept of Compounded Annual Growth Rate (CAGR)<\/strong> and the other related to Decay<\/strong> using the concept of Half-Life<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How does it apply to Engineering Organizations?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

CAGR of Skills<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

An engineer or a manager possesses many skills and knowledge to perform on the job. These are dependent upon the technology and industry domain. Normally most engineers are used to seeing Growth<\/strong> in their skills. There is an assumption that Value always increases<\/strong>, hence relatable to CAGR. It is a commonly used term in business to denote the growth of any phenomenon. Examples could be for revenue, unit sales or number of users. The number indicates the constant rate of growth that would take a starting value to an ending value over a particular duration. For the purposes of this article, we use CAGR to capture past data, though it can also be used for forecasts. Over a period of an engineer's work life, due to experience and application, certain skills and knowledge grow in utility value<\/strong>. Every individual wishes to grow this utility value at a high rate. An individual's investment on honing the same determines the growth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Half-Life of Skills<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Now let us look at Decay. Half-Life<\/strong> was originally used in Nuclear Physics, which is the time required for a quantity to reduce to half of its initial value. The term describes how quickly unstable atoms undergo radioactive decay or how long stable atoms survive (https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Half-life). However, for our purpose, we can generalize this concept to describe any phenomenon where \u201cOver what duration a utility value or worth decreases by Half\u201d<\/strong>. Contrary to what an engineer wishes, Skills and Knowledge also Decay over time. Most often the market and industry conditions determines this decay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Variety of Skills<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

We can apply this phenomenon to any of the skills and knowledge. Usage of certain tools, skills in specific technologies, practices like critical thinking, problem solving, communication, best practices & lessons learnt, industry or domain specific nuances or transfer learning from one domain to another are all good examples of skill and knowledge. Some Emotional Quotient (EQ) related competencies can also qualify for this category. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We then can categorize these skills and knowledge and put side by side the CAGR and an estimate their Half-Life. The utility value diminishes on account of obsolescence or disruptions in the domain with entry of new ones. While one might have a spent long time in accumulating certain skills, they might lose their significance over a short period of time due to lack of application. What used to be Half-life of 5-6 years for technologies and skills earlier in many domains have now reduced to as low as 2-3 years. This is especially true for digital transformation technologies. In simple terms many skills can lose their value and become obsolete in much shorter durations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How can one use both the above ideas at an individual level? <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

We propose that it is very important to view Skills and Knowledge from both the perspectives of past CAGR and Half-Life which is in the future. As an engineer one can start by capturing the Portfolio of Skills and Knowledge<\/strong> that one possesses. Then one can do an analysis and develop a good understanding on which skills and knowledge in this portfolio. One also needs to be aware of which of the skills have accumulated value<\/strong> and have grown at a good rate. A particular skill or an industry specific knowledge can dramatically accumulate value when there is a surge in demand. More so some game changer ideas or technology<\/strong> can create such a surge. For example, in Digital Transformation<\/strong> - Smartphone apps led services, Smart Devices, Social Media led engagement, Cloud Enablement, Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to name a few.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the other hand, many skills are likely to erode in utility value<\/strong> as quantified by Half-Life<\/strong>. The half-life period would be a good point for a decision, to drop the skill from the portfolio sometime soon and potentially replace with another skill. This is irrespective of the time that has taken to accumulate the same. The half-life is generally determined by the rapidity of changes in that technology or industry domain. This may also be dependent upon the speed of changes and strategies pursued within a particular company. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is the implication for Organizations? <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

First it is about Enterprise Agility<\/strong> and how people are organized in terms of Agile Teams to adapt to the changes and continuously deliver customer value. Within teams, there is a need to have people with T-Shaped Skills<\/strong>. Each team member not only have deep skills in one or two areas but also have broad complementary skills to the extent practical \u2013 Portfolio of Skills<\/strong>. The leadership and management in organizations have to help team members in managing this portfolio and track both Half-Life <\/strong>and CAGR<\/strong>. The portfolio would also apply at the team and organization level. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then it is incumbent on leadership to continuously<\/strong> make investments on growing skills and knowledge <\/strong>and prune the eroding ones<\/strong>. At the same time, an individual has to embrace life-long learning to actively manage the portfolio. Some individuals might end up having a non-performing portfolio whereas some others may build a high-performing portfolio. A combined high-performing portfolio of Skills would benefit individuals, teams and organizations.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CAGR & Half-Life of Skills & Knowledge","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"cagr-half-life-of-skills-knowledge","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 12:41:21","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 12:41:21","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17980","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17570,"post_author":"10","post_date":"2020-11-23 18:23:20","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-23 12:53:20","post_content":"\n

In the last couple of weeks, I had some long phone conversations with a few of my old buddies. I had not spoken to them in several months. The COVID situation was helping to connect with many through video calls rather than just messages on social media. One of them works for a large engineering services organization. Two others are in R&D organizations. One thing that struck me was everybody was referring to one project or the other they were working on (in their workplace of course). So you might ask \"so what is the issue?\"<\/em><\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Project approach is most common<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Within most IT and R&D organization, people are used to being \u201cassigned\u201d to projects. Once they finish one a project, they move on to another. An engineer typically fills up a resume with major projects completed and contributions made. Strong project management practices have evolved to closely monitor individual tasks and resources (engineers and other materials). Project managers manage risks that could impact project completion and thereby its objectives. Funding is done for projects based on resources (both people and material). But, projects by definition are temporary in nature and this can drive thinking and decision making. Once Projects get closed most of the learnings too get wrapped up. So is there a better way to organize?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Transition from Project thinking to Product Thinking<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

As part of Lean-Agile transformation,<\/strong> one of the foundation principles we convey is Product Thinking <\/strong>and Long-term Stable Teams.<\/strong> A department and in turn a larger organization should ideally be an aggregation of carefully designed teams each with a manageable size of members having requisite skills. Product thinking is about slices of customer value rather than set of project work<\/em><\/strong> packages. Product work gets assigned to teams as opposed to an individual getting assigned work. All work is then accomplished collectively by the members as one team<\/strong>. Product by nature lasts longer till it loses its utility value. So long-term stable teams and product thinking will allow members to be invested in their team identity, evolve team norms and practices and become high performing over a period of time. Customer value gets delivered over a longer period of time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continuous Improvement<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Once there is a long-term mindset, it enables Continuous Improvement<\/strong>, which is the next foundation element of Lean-Agile thinking. The teams will be able to develop a systematic understanding of the current state of performance indicators. They get time to carefully think of any improvements and can implement the same so that performance remains stable and also can improve. They can set standards and practices to ensure stability. It is difficult to imagine how this can happen in a temporary project setup where the key objective is to finish a project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Talk to us if you are wondering how Lean-Agile transformation can change Projects based organization? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

#ProjectToProduct, #ProductThinking, #OrganizeAroundValue, #ContinuousImprovement, #LongtermStableTeams<\/p>\n","post_title":"Lean-Agile in Projects Organization \u2013 is it oil in water?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"17570-2","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 13:08:07","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 13:08:07","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17570","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":2},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 2 of 2 1 2
\n
Technologies and Skills Associated<\/strong><\/td>CAGR*<\/strong><\/td>Half-Life*<\/strong><\/td>Recommended Actions<\/strong><\/td><\/tr>
Company Proprietary Protocol  <\/td>-10%<\/td>2 years<\/td>Immediately Re-Skill engineers in this team with one other technology with a higher CAGR<\/td><\/tr>
NFC  <\/td>5%<\/td>3 years<\/td>Start discussions on Re-Skilling engineers in this team  <\/td><\/tr>
ZigBee  <\/td>2%<\/td>2 years<\/td>Gradually Re-Skill engineers in this team with one other technology with a higher CAGR  <\/td><\/tr>
Bluetooth  <\/td>15%<\/td>3 years<\/td>Build more capacity and capability in this area by re-skilling other team members  <\/td><\/tr>
WiFi  <\/td>5%<\/td>4 years<\/td>Build more capacity and capability in this area by re-skilling other team members  <\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Note*: The Technologies named have respective trademarks and the numbers in the table shown are for discussion purposes only.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is one other action which Srinivas should immediately take:
Re-Organize his Agile Teams with a better mix
of engineers with different technology skills. Engineers in each of the teams will
have T-Shaped skills rather than one specialization. This way the teams and
hence members are better prepared for adaptation to emerging technologies<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW # 230 - How to deal with Half-Life of Skills?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-230-how-to-deal-with-half-life-of-skills","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 13:07:30","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 13:07:30","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17985","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17980,"post_author":"10","post_date":"2021-01-13 09:43:04","post_date_gmt":"2021-01-13 04:13:04","post_content":"\n

Recently I had a chance to be on a panel discussion on the theme of Digital Transformation<\/strong>. As we were discussing, one our panel members mentioned about \u201cHalf-Life\u201d of Skills <\/strong>in today\u2019s fast-paced technology world. It aroused my curiosity as I thought that it is an interesting concept to apply for Skills. We did a bit of research on this and found several extremely interesting articles. We want to tie two ideas here one related to Growth<\/strong> through the concept of Compounded Annual Growth Rate (CAGR)<\/strong> and the other related to Decay<\/strong> using the concept of Half-Life<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How does it apply to Engineering Organizations?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

CAGR of Skills<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

An engineer or a manager possesses many skills and knowledge to perform on the job. These are dependent upon the technology and industry domain. Normally most engineers are used to seeing Growth<\/strong> in their skills. There is an assumption that Value always increases<\/strong>, hence relatable to CAGR. It is a commonly used term in business to denote the growth of any phenomenon. Examples could be for revenue, unit sales or number of users. The number indicates the constant rate of growth that would take a starting value to an ending value over a particular duration. For the purposes of this article, we use CAGR to capture past data, though it can also be used for forecasts. Over a period of an engineer's work life, due to experience and application, certain skills and knowledge grow in utility value<\/strong>. Every individual wishes to grow this utility value at a high rate. An individual's investment on honing the same determines the growth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Half-Life of Skills<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Now let us look at Decay. Half-Life<\/strong> was originally used in Nuclear Physics, which is the time required for a quantity to reduce to half of its initial value. The term describes how quickly unstable atoms undergo radioactive decay or how long stable atoms survive (https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Half-life). However, for our purpose, we can generalize this concept to describe any phenomenon where \u201cOver what duration a utility value or worth decreases by Half\u201d<\/strong>. Contrary to what an engineer wishes, Skills and Knowledge also Decay over time. Most often the market and industry conditions determines this decay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Variety of Skills<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

We can apply this phenomenon to any of the skills and knowledge. Usage of certain tools, skills in specific technologies, practices like critical thinking, problem solving, communication, best practices & lessons learnt, industry or domain specific nuances or transfer learning from one domain to another are all good examples of skill and knowledge. Some Emotional Quotient (EQ) related competencies can also qualify for this category. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We then can categorize these skills and knowledge and put side by side the CAGR and an estimate their Half-Life. The utility value diminishes on account of obsolescence or disruptions in the domain with entry of new ones. While one might have a spent long time in accumulating certain skills, they might lose their significance over a short period of time due to lack of application. What used to be Half-life of 5-6 years for technologies and skills earlier in many domains have now reduced to as low as 2-3 years. This is especially true for digital transformation technologies. In simple terms many skills can lose their value and become obsolete in much shorter durations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How can one use both the above ideas at an individual level? <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

We propose that it is very important to view Skills and Knowledge from both the perspectives of past CAGR and Half-Life which is in the future. As an engineer one can start by capturing the Portfolio of Skills and Knowledge<\/strong> that one possesses. Then one can do an analysis and develop a good understanding on which skills and knowledge in this portfolio. One also needs to be aware of which of the skills have accumulated value<\/strong> and have grown at a good rate. A particular skill or an industry specific knowledge can dramatically accumulate value when there is a surge in demand. More so some game changer ideas or technology<\/strong> can create such a surge. For example, in Digital Transformation<\/strong> - Smartphone apps led services, Smart Devices, Social Media led engagement, Cloud Enablement, Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to name a few.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the other hand, many skills are likely to erode in utility value<\/strong> as quantified by Half-Life<\/strong>. The half-life period would be a good point for a decision, to drop the skill from the portfolio sometime soon and potentially replace with another skill. This is irrespective of the time that has taken to accumulate the same. The half-life is generally determined by the rapidity of changes in that technology or industry domain. This may also be dependent upon the speed of changes and strategies pursued within a particular company. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is the implication for Organizations? <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

First it is about Enterprise Agility<\/strong> and how people are organized in terms of Agile Teams to adapt to the changes and continuously deliver customer value. Within teams, there is a need to have people with T-Shaped Skills<\/strong>. Each team member not only have deep skills in one or two areas but also have broad complementary skills to the extent practical \u2013 Portfolio of Skills<\/strong>. The leadership and management in organizations have to help team members in managing this portfolio and track both Half-Life <\/strong>and CAGR<\/strong>. The portfolio would also apply at the team and organization level. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then it is incumbent on leadership to continuously<\/strong> make investments on growing skills and knowledge <\/strong>and prune the eroding ones<\/strong>. At the same time, an individual has to embrace life-long learning to actively manage the portfolio. Some individuals might end up having a non-performing portfolio whereas some others may build a high-performing portfolio. A combined high-performing portfolio of Skills would benefit individuals, teams and organizations.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CAGR & Half-Life of Skills & Knowledge","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"cagr-half-life-of-skills-knowledge","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 12:41:21","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 12:41:21","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17980","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17570,"post_author":"10","post_date":"2020-11-23 18:23:20","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-23 12:53:20","post_content":"\n

In the last couple of weeks, I had some long phone conversations with a few of my old buddies. I had not spoken to them in several months. The COVID situation was helping to connect with many through video calls rather than just messages on social media. One of them works for a large engineering services organization. Two others are in R&D organizations. One thing that struck me was everybody was referring to one project or the other they were working on (in their workplace of course). So you might ask \"so what is the issue?\"<\/em><\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Project approach is most common<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Within most IT and R&D organization, people are used to being \u201cassigned\u201d to projects. Once they finish one a project, they move on to another. An engineer typically fills up a resume with major projects completed and contributions made. Strong project management practices have evolved to closely monitor individual tasks and resources (engineers and other materials). Project managers manage risks that could impact project completion and thereby its objectives. Funding is done for projects based on resources (both people and material). But, projects by definition are temporary in nature and this can drive thinking and decision making. Once Projects get closed most of the learnings too get wrapped up. So is there a better way to organize?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Transition from Project thinking to Product Thinking<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

As part of Lean-Agile transformation,<\/strong> one of the foundation principles we convey is Product Thinking <\/strong>and Long-term Stable Teams.<\/strong> A department and in turn a larger organization should ideally be an aggregation of carefully designed teams each with a manageable size of members having requisite skills. Product thinking is about slices of customer value rather than set of project work<\/em><\/strong> packages. Product work gets assigned to teams as opposed to an individual getting assigned work. All work is then accomplished collectively by the members as one team<\/strong>. Product by nature lasts longer till it loses its utility value. So long-term stable teams and product thinking will allow members to be invested in their team identity, evolve team norms and practices and become high performing over a period of time. Customer value gets delivered over a longer period of time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continuous Improvement<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Once there is a long-term mindset, it enables Continuous Improvement<\/strong>, which is the next foundation element of Lean-Agile thinking. The teams will be able to develop a systematic understanding of the current state of performance indicators. They get time to carefully think of any improvements and can implement the same so that performance remains stable and also can improve. They can set standards and practices to ensure stability. It is difficult to imagine how this can happen in a temporary project setup where the key objective is to finish a project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Talk to us if you are wondering how Lean-Agile transformation can change Projects based organization? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

#ProjectToProduct, #ProductThinking, #OrganizeAroundValue, #ContinuousImprovement, #LongtermStableTeams<\/p>\n","post_title":"Lean-Agile in Projects Organization \u2013 is it oil in water?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"17570-2","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 13:08:07","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 13:08:07","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17570","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":2},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 2 of 2 1 2
\n

Some of the actions that could be taken look like below: <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Technologies and Skills Associated<\/strong><\/td>CAGR*<\/strong><\/td>Half-Life*<\/strong><\/td>Recommended Actions<\/strong><\/td><\/tr>
Company Proprietary Protocol  <\/td>-10%<\/td>2 years<\/td>Immediately Re-Skill engineers in this team with one other technology with a higher CAGR<\/td><\/tr>
NFC  <\/td>5%<\/td>3 years<\/td>Start discussions on Re-Skilling engineers in this team  <\/td><\/tr>
ZigBee  <\/td>2%<\/td>2 years<\/td>Gradually Re-Skill engineers in this team with one other technology with a higher CAGR  <\/td><\/tr>
Bluetooth  <\/td>15%<\/td>3 years<\/td>Build more capacity and capability in this area by re-skilling other team members  <\/td><\/tr>
WiFi  <\/td>5%<\/td>4 years<\/td>Build more capacity and capability in this area by re-skilling other team members  <\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Note*: The Technologies named have respective trademarks and the numbers in the table shown are for discussion purposes only.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is one other action which Srinivas should immediately take:
Re-Organize his Agile Teams with a better mix
of engineers with different technology skills. Engineers in each of the teams will
have T-Shaped skills rather than one specialization. This way the teams and
hence members are better prepared for adaptation to emerging technologies<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW # 230 - How to deal with Half-Life of Skills?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-230-how-to-deal-with-half-life-of-skills","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 13:07:30","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 13:07:30","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17985","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17980,"post_author":"10","post_date":"2021-01-13 09:43:04","post_date_gmt":"2021-01-13 04:13:04","post_content":"\n

Recently I had a chance to be on a panel discussion on the theme of Digital Transformation<\/strong>. As we were discussing, one our panel members mentioned about \u201cHalf-Life\u201d of Skills <\/strong>in today\u2019s fast-paced technology world. It aroused my curiosity as I thought that it is an interesting concept to apply for Skills. We did a bit of research on this and found several extremely interesting articles. We want to tie two ideas here one related to Growth<\/strong> through the concept of Compounded Annual Growth Rate (CAGR)<\/strong> and the other related to Decay<\/strong> using the concept of Half-Life<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How does it apply to Engineering Organizations?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

CAGR of Skills<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

An engineer or a manager possesses many skills and knowledge to perform on the job. These are dependent upon the technology and industry domain. Normally most engineers are used to seeing Growth<\/strong> in their skills. There is an assumption that Value always increases<\/strong>, hence relatable to CAGR. It is a commonly used term in business to denote the growth of any phenomenon. Examples could be for revenue, unit sales or number of users. The number indicates the constant rate of growth that would take a starting value to an ending value over a particular duration. For the purposes of this article, we use CAGR to capture past data, though it can also be used for forecasts. Over a period of an engineer's work life, due to experience and application, certain skills and knowledge grow in utility value<\/strong>. Every individual wishes to grow this utility value at a high rate. An individual's investment on honing the same determines the growth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Half-Life of Skills<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Now let us look at Decay. Half-Life<\/strong> was originally used in Nuclear Physics, which is the time required for a quantity to reduce to half of its initial value. The term describes how quickly unstable atoms undergo radioactive decay or how long stable atoms survive (https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Half-life). However, for our purpose, we can generalize this concept to describe any phenomenon where \u201cOver what duration a utility value or worth decreases by Half\u201d<\/strong>. Contrary to what an engineer wishes, Skills and Knowledge also Decay over time. Most often the market and industry conditions determines this decay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Variety of Skills<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

We can apply this phenomenon to any of the skills and knowledge. Usage of certain tools, skills in specific technologies, practices like critical thinking, problem solving, communication, best practices & lessons learnt, industry or domain specific nuances or transfer learning from one domain to another are all good examples of skill and knowledge. Some Emotional Quotient (EQ) related competencies can also qualify for this category. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We then can categorize these skills and knowledge and put side by side the CAGR and an estimate their Half-Life. The utility value diminishes on account of obsolescence or disruptions in the domain with entry of new ones. While one might have a spent long time in accumulating certain skills, they might lose their significance over a short period of time due to lack of application. What used to be Half-life of 5-6 years for technologies and skills earlier in many domains have now reduced to as low as 2-3 years. This is especially true for digital transformation technologies. In simple terms many skills can lose their value and become obsolete in much shorter durations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How can one use both the above ideas at an individual level? <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

We propose that it is very important to view Skills and Knowledge from both the perspectives of past CAGR and Half-Life which is in the future. As an engineer one can start by capturing the Portfolio of Skills and Knowledge<\/strong> that one possesses. Then one can do an analysis and develop a good understanding on which skills and knowledge in this portfolio. One also needs to be aware of which of the skills have accumulated value<\/strong> and have grown at a good rate. A particular skill or an industry specific knowledge can dramatically accumulate value when there is a surge in demand. More so some game changer ideas or technology<\/strong> can create such a surge. For example, in Digital Transformation<\/strong> - Smartphone apps led services, Smart Devices, Social Media led engagement, Cloud Enablement, Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to name a few.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the other hand, many skills are likely to erode in utility value<\/strong> as quantified by Half-Life<\/strong>. The half-life period would be a good point for a decision, to drop the skill from the portfolio sometime soon and potentially replace with another skill. This is irrespective of the time that has taken to accumulate the same. The half-life is generally determined by the rapidity of changes in that technology or industry domain. This may also be dependent upon the speed of changes and strategies pursued within a particular company. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is the implication for Organizations? <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

First it is about Enterprise Agility<\/strong> and how people are organized in terms of Agile Teams to adapt to the changes and continuously deliver customer value. Within teams, there is a need to have people with T-Shaped Skills<\/strong>. Each team member not only have deep skills in one or two areas but also have broad complementary skills to the extent practical \u2013 Portfolio of Skills<\/strong>. The leadership and management in organizations have to help team members in managing this portfolio and track both Half-Life <\/strong>and CAGR<\/strong>. The portfolio would also apply at the team and organization level. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then it is incumbent on leadership to continuously<\/strong> make investments on growing skills and knowledge <\/strong>and prune the eroding ones<\/strong>. At the same time, an individual has to embrace life-long learning to actively manage the portfolio. Some individuals might end up having a non-performing portfolio whereas some others may build a high-performing portfolio. A combined high-performing portfolio of Skills would benefit individuals, teams and organizations.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CAGR & Half-Life of Skills & Knowledge","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"cagr-half-life-of-skills-knowledge","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 12:41:21","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 12:41:21","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17980","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17570,"post_author":"10","post_date":"2020-11-23 18:23:20","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-23 12:53:20","post_content":"\n

In the last couple of weeks, I had some long phone conversations with a few of my old buddies. I had not spoken to them in several months. The COVID situation was helping to connect with many through video calls rather than just messages on social media. One of them works for a large engineering services organization. Two others are in R&D organizations. One thing that struck me was everybody was referring to one project or the other they were working on (in their workplace of course). So you might ask \"so what is the issue?\"<\/em><\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Project approach is most common<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Within most IT and R&D organization, people are used to being \u201cassigned\u201d to projects. Once they finish one a project, they move on to another. An engineer typically fills up a resume with major projects completed and contributions made. Strong project management practices have evolved to closely monitor individual tasks and resources (engineers and other materials). Project managers manage risks that could impact project completion and thereby its objectives. Funding is done for projects based on resources (both people and material). But, projects by definition are temporary in nature and this can drive thinking and decision making. Once Projects get closed most of the learnings too get wrapped up. So is there a better way to organize?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Transition from Project thinking to Product Thinking<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

As part of Lean-Agile transformation,<\/strong> one of the foundation principles we convey is Product Thinking <\/strong>and Long-term Stable Teams.<\/strong> A department and in turn a larger organization should ideally be an aggregation of carefully designed teams each with a manageable size of members having requisite skills. Product thinking is about slices of customer value rather than set of project work<\/em><\/strong> packages. Product work gets assigned to teams as opposed to an individual getting assigned work. All work is then accomplished collectively by the members as one team<\/strong>. Product by nature lasts longer till it loses its utility value. So long-term stable teams and product thinking will allow members to be invested in their team identity, evolve team norms and practices and become high performing over a period of time. Customer value gets delivered over a longer period of time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continuous Improvement<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Once there is a long-term mindset, it enables Continuous Improvement<\/strong>, which is the next foundation element of Lean-Agile thinking. The teams will be able to develop a systematic understanding of the current state of performance indicators. They get time to carefully think of any improvements and can implement the same so that performance remains stable and also can improve. They can set standards and practices to ensure stability. It is difficult to imagine how this can happen in a temporary project setup where the key objective is to finish a project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Talk to us if you are wondering how Lean-Agile transformation can change Projects based organization? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

#ProjectToProduct, #ProductThinking, #OrganizeAroundValue, #ContinuousImprovement, #LongtermStableTeams<\/p>\n","post_title":"Lean-Agile in Projects Organization \u2013 is it oil in water?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"17570-2","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 13:08:07","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 13:08:07","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17570","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":2},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 2 of 2 1 2
\n

Suggested <\/span>Solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the actions that could be taken look like below: <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Technologies and Skills Associated<\/strong><\/td>CAGR*<\/strong><\/td>Half-Life*<\/strong><\/td>Recommended Actions<\/strong><\/td><\/tr>
Company Proprietary Protocol  <\/td>-10%<\/td>2 years<\/td>Immediately Re-Skill engineers in this team with one other technology with a higher CAGR<\/td><\/tr>
NFC  <\/td>5%<\/td>3 years<\/td>Start discussions on Re-Skilling engineers in this team  <\/td><\/tr>
ZigBee  <\/td>2%<\/td>2 years<\/td>Gradually Re-Skill engineers in this team with one other technology with a higher CAGR  <\/td><\/tr>
Bluetooth  <\/td>15%<\/td>3 years<\/td>Build more capacity and capability in this area by re-skilling other team members  <\/td><\/tr>
WiFi  <\/td>5%<\/td>4 years<\/td>Build more capacity and capability in this area by re-skilling other team members  <\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Note*: The Technologies named have respective trademarks and the numbers in the table shown are for discussion purposes only.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is one other action which Srinivas should immediately take:
Re-Organize his Agile Teams with a better mix
of engineers with different technology skills. Engineers in each of the teams will
have T-Shaped skills rather than one specialization. This way the teams and
hence members are better prepared for adaptation to emerging technologies<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW # 230 - How to deal with Half-Life of Skills?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-230-how-to-deal-with-half-life-of-skills","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 13:07:30","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 13:07:30","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17985","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17980,"post_author":"10","post_date":"2021-01-13 09:43:04","post_date_gmt":"2021-01-13 04:13:04","post_content":"\n

Recently I had a chance to be on a panel discussion on the theme of Digital Transformation<\/strong>. As we were discussing, one our panel members mentioned about \u201cHalf-Life\u201d of Skills <\/strong>in today\u2019s fast-paced technology world. It aroused my curiosity as I thought that it is an interesting concept to apply for Skills. We did a bit of research on this and found several extremely interesting articles. We want to tie two ideas here one related to Growth<\/strong> through the concept of Compounded Annual Growth Rate (CAGR)<\/strong> and the other related to Decay<\/strong> using the concept of Half-Life<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How does it apply to Engineering Organizations?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

CAGR of Skills<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

An engineer or a manager possesses many skills and knowledge to perform on the job. These are dependent upon the technology and industry domain. Normally most engineers are used to seeing Growth<\/strong> in their skills. There is an assumption that Value always increases<\/strong>, hence relatable to CAGR. It is a commonly used term in business to denote the growth of any phenomenon. Examples could be for revenue, unit sales or number of users. The number indicates the constant rate of growth that would take a starting value to an ending value over a particular duration. For the purposes of this article, we use CAGR to capture past data, though it can also be used for forecasts. Over a period of an engineer's work life, due to experience and application, certain skills and knowledge grow in utility value<\/strong>. Every individual wishes to grow this utility value at a high rate. An individual's investment on honing the same determines the growth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Half-Life of Skills<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Now let us look at Decay. Half-Life<\/strong> was originally used in Nuclear Physics, which is the time required for a quantity to reduce to half of its initial value. The term describes how quickly unstable atoms undergo radioactive decay or how long stable atoms survive (https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Half-life). However, for our purpose, we can generalize this concept to describe any phenomenon where \u201cOver what duration a utility value or worth decreases by Half\u201d<\/strong>. Contrary to what an engineer wishes, Skills and Knowledge also Decay over time. Most often the market and industry conditions determines this decay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Variety of Skills<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

We can apply this phenomenon to any of the skills and knowledge. Usage of certain tools, skills in specific technologies, practices like critical thinking, problem solving, communication, best practices & lessons learnt, industry or domain specific nuances or transfer learning from one domain to another are all good examples of skill and knowledge. Some Emotional Quotient (EQ) related competencies can also qualify for this category. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We then can categorize these skills and knowledge and put side by side the CAGR and an estimate their Half-Life. The utility value diminishes on account of obsolescence or disruptions in the domain with entry of new ones. While one might have a spent long time in accumulating certain skills, they might lose their significance over a short period of time due to lack of application. What used to be Half-life of 5-6 years for technologies and skills earlier in many domains have now reduced to as low as 2-3 years. This is especially true for digital transformation technologies. In simple terms many skills can lose their value and become obsolete in much shorter durations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How can one use both the above ideas at an individual level? <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

We propose that it is very important to view Skills and Knowledge from both the perspectives of past CAGR and Half-Life which is in the future. As an engineer one can start by capturing the Portfolio of Skills and Knowledge<\/strong> that one possesses. Then one can do an analysis and develop a good understanding on which skills and knowledge in this portfolio. One also needs to be aware of which of the skills have accumulated value<\/strong> and have grown at a good rate. A particular skill or an industry specific knowledge can dramatically accumulate value when there is a surge in demand. More so some game changer ideas or technology<\/strong> can create such a surge. For example, in Digital Transformation<\/strong> - Smartphone apps led services, Smart Devices, Social Media led engagement, Cloud Enablement, Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to name a few.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the other hand, many skills are likely to erode in utility value<\/strong> as quantified by Half-Life<\/strong>. The half-life period would be a good point for a decision, to drop the skill from the portfolio sometime soon and potentially replace with another skill. This is irrespective of the time that has taken to accumulate the same. The half-life is generally determined by the rapidity of changes in that technology or industry domain. This may also be dependent upon the speed of changes and strategies pursued within a particular company. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is the implication for Organizations? <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

First it is about Enterprise Agility<\/strong> and how people are organized in terms of Agile Teams to adapt to the changes and continuously deliver customer value. Within teams, there is a need to have people with T-Shaped Skills<\/strong>. Each team member not only have deep skills in one or two areas but also have broad complementary skills to the extent practical \u2013 Portfolio of Skills<\/strong>. The leadership and management in organizations have to help team members in managing this portfolio and track both Half-Life <\/strong>and CAGR<\/strong>. The portfolio would also apply at the team and organization level. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then it is incumbent on leadership to continuously<\/strong> make investments on growing skills and knowledge <\/strong>and prune the eroding ones<\/strong>. At the same time, an individual has to embrace life-long learning to actively manage the portfolio. Some individuals might end up having a non-performing portfolio whereas some others may build a high-performing portfolio. A combined high-performing portfolio of Skills would benefit individuals, teams and organizations.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CAGR & Half-Life of Skills & Knowledge","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"cagr-half-life-of-skills-knowledge","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 12:41:21","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 12:41:21","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17980","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17570,"post_author":"10","post_date":"2020-11-23 18:23:20","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-23 12:53:20","post_content":"\n

In the last couple of weeks, I had some long phone conversations with a few of my old buddies. I had not spoken to them in several months. The COVID situation was helping to connect with many through video calls rather than just messages on social media. One of them works for a large engineering services organization. Two others are in R&D organizations. One thing that struck me was everybody was referring to one project or the other they were working on (in their workplace of course). So you might ask \"so what is the issue?\"<\/em><\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Project approach is most common<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Within most IT and R&D organization, people are used to being \u201cassigned\u201d to projects. Once they finish one a project, they move on to another. An engineer typically fills up a resume with major projects completed and contributions made. Strong project management practices have evolved to closely monitor individual tasks and resources (engineers and other materials). Project managers manage risks that could impact project completion and thereby its objectives. Funding is done for projects based on resources (both people and material). But, projects by definition are temporary in nature and this can drive thinking and decision making. Once Projects get closed most of the learnings too get wrapped up. So is there a better way to organize?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Transition from Project thinking to Product Thinking<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

As part of Lean-Agile transformation,<\/strong> one of the foundation principles we convey is Product Thinking <\/strong>and Long-term Stable Teams.<\/strong> A department and in turn a larger organization should ideally be an aggregation of carefully designed teams each with a manageable size of members having requisite skills. Product thinking is about slices of customer value rather than set of project work<\/em><\/strong> packages. Product work gets assigned to teams as opposed to an individual getting assigned work. All work is then accomplished collectively by the members as one team<\/strong>. Product by nature lasts longer till it loses its utility value. So long-term stable teams and product thinking will allow members to be invested in their team identity, evolve team norms and practices and become high performing over a period of time. Customer value gets delivered over a longer period of time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continuous Improvement<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Once there is a long-term mindset, it enables Continuous Improvement<\/strong>, which is the next foundation element of Lean-Agile thinking. The teams will be able to develop a systematic understanding of the current state of performance indicators. They get time to carefully think of any improvements and can implement the same so that performance remains stable and also can improve. They can set standards and practices to ensure stability. It is difficult to imagine how this can happen in a temporary project setup where the key objective is to finish a project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Talk to us if you are wondering how Lean-Agile transformation can change Projects based organization? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

#ProjectToProduct, #ProductThinking, #OrganizeAroundValue, #ContinuousImprovement, #LongtermStableTeams<\/p>\n","post_title":"Lean-Agile in Projects Organization \u2013 is it oil in water?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"17570-2","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 13:08:07","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 13:08:07","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17570","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":2},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 2 of 2 1 2
\n

 Scroll down for the proposed Solution !<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suggested <\/span>Solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the actions that could be taken look like below: <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Technologies and Skills Associated<\/strong><\/td>CAGR*<\/strong><\/td>Half-Life*<\/strong><\/td>Recommended Actions<\/strong><\/td><\/tr>
Company Proprietary Protocol  <\/td>-10%<\/td>2 years<\/td>Immediately Re-Skill engineers in this team with one other technology with a higher CAGR<\/td><\/tr>
NFC  <\/td>5%<\/td>3 years<\/td>Start discussions on Re-Skilling engineers in this team  <\/td><\/tr>
ZigBee  <\/td>2%<\/td>2 years<\/td>Gradually Re-Skill engineers in this team with one other technology with a higher CAGR  <\/td><\/tr>
Bluetooth  <\/td>15%<\/td>3 years<\/td>Build more capacity and capability in this area by re-skilling other team members  <\/td><\/tr>
WiFi  <\/td>5%<\/td>4 years<\/td>Build more capacity and capability in this area by re-skilling other team members  <\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Note*: The Technologies named have respective trademarks and the numbers in the table shown are for discussion purposes only.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is one other action which Srinivas should immediately take:
Re-Organize his Agile Teams with a better mix
of engineers with different technology skills. Engineers in each of the teams will
have T-Shaped skills rather than one specialization. This way the teams and
hence members are better prepared for adaptation to emerging technologies<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW # 230 - How to deal with Half-Life of Skills?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-230-how-to-deal-with-half-life-of-skills","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 13:07:30","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 13:07:30","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17985","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17980,"post_author":"10","post_date":"2021-01-13 09:43:04","post_date_gmt":"2021-01-13 04:13:04","post_content":"\n

Recently I had a chance to be on a panel discussion on the theme of Digital Transformation<\/strong>. As we were discussing, one our panel members mentioned about \u201cHalf-Life\u201d of Skills <\/strong>in today\u2019s fast-paced technology world. It aroused my curiosity as I thought that it is an interesting concept to apply for Skills. We did a bit of research on this and found several extremely interesting articles. We want to tie two ideas here one related to Growth<\/strong> through the concept of Compounded Annual Growth Rate (CAGR)<\/strong> and the other related to Decay<\/strong> using the concept of Half-Life<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How does it apply to Engineering Organizations?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

CAGR of Skills<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

An engineer or a manager possesses many skills and knowledge to perform on the job. These are dependent upon the technology and industry domain. Normally most engineers are used to seeing Growth<\/strong> in their skills. There is an assumption that Value always increases<\/strong>, hence relatable to CAGR. It is a commonly used term in business to denote the growth of any phenomenon. Examples could be for revenue, unit sales or number of users. The number indicates the constant rate of growth that would take a starting value to an ending value over a particular duration. For the purposes of this article, we use CAGR to capture past data, though it can also be used for forecasts. Over a period of an engineer's work life, due to experience and application, certain skills and knowledge grow in utility value<\/strong>. Every individual wishes to grow this utility value at a high rate. An individual's investment on honing the same determines the growth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Half-Life of Skills<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Now let us look at Decay. Half-Life<\/strong> was originally used in Nuclear Physics, which is the time required for a quantity to reduce to half of its initial value. The term describes how quickly unstable atoms undergo radioactive decay or how long stable atoms survive (https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Half-life). However, for our purpose, we can generalize this concept to describe any phenomenon where \u201cOver what duration a utility value or worth decreases by Half\u201d<\/strong>. Contrary to what an engineer wishes, Skills and Knowledge also Decay over time. Most often the market and industry conditions determines this decay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Variety of Skills<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

We can apply this phenomenon to any of the skills and knowledge. Usage of certain tools, skills in specific technologies, practices like critical thinking, problem solving, communication, best practices & lessons learnt, industry or domain specific nuances or transfer learning from one domain to another are all good examples of skill and knowledge. Some Emotional Quotient (EQ) related competencies can also qualify for this category. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We then can categorize these skills and knowledge and put side by side the CAGR and an estimate their Half-Life. The utility value diminishes on account of obsolescence or disruptions in the domain with entry of new ones. While one might have a spent long time in accumulating certain skills, they might lose their significance over a short period of time due to lack of application. What used to be Half-life of 5-6 years for technologies and skills earlier in many domains have now reduced to as low as 2-3 years. This is especially true for digital transformation technologies. In simple terms many skills can lose their value and become obsolete in much shorter durations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How can one use both the above ideas at an individual level? <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

We propose that it is very important to view Skills and Knowledge from both the perspectives of past CAGR and Half-Life which is in the future. As an engineer one can start by capturing the Portfolio of Skills and Knowledge<\/strong> that one possesses. Then one can do an analysis and develop a good understanding on which skills and knowledge in this portfolio. One also needs to be aware of which of the skills have accumulated value<\/strong> and have grown at a good rate. A particular skill or an industry specific knowledge can dramatically accumulate value when there is a surge in demand. More so some game changer ideas or technology<\/strong> can create such a surge. For example, in Digital Transformation<\/strong> - Smartphone apps led services, Smart Devices, Social Media led engagement, Cloud Enablement, Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to name a few.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the other hand, many skills are likely to erode in utility value<\/strong> as quantified by Half-Life<\/strong>. The half-life period would be a good point for a decision, to drop the skill from the portfolio sometime soon and potentially replace with another skill. This is irrespective of the time that has taken to accumulate the same. The half-life is generally determined by the rapidity of changes in that technology or industry domain. This may also be dependent upon the speed of changes and strategies pursued within a particular company. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is the implication for Organizations? <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

First it is about Enterprise Agility<\/strong> and how people are organized in terms of Agile Teams to adapt to the changes and continuously deliver customer value. Within teams, there is a need to have people with T-Shaped Skills<\/strong>. Each team member not only have deep skills in one or two areas but also have broad complementary skills to the extent practical \u2013 Portfolio of Skills<\/strong>. The leadership and management in organizations have to help team members in managing this portfolio and track both Half-Life <\/strong>and CAGR<\/strong>. The portfolio would also apply at the team and organization level. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then it is incumbent on leadership to continuously<\/strong> make investments on growing skills and knowledge <\/strong>and prune the eroding ones<\/strong>. At the same time, an individual has to embrace life-long learning to actively manage the portfolio. Some individuals might end up having a non-performing portfolio whereas some others may build a high-performing portfolio. A combined high-performing portfolio of Skills would benefit individuals, teams and organizations.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CAGR & Half-Life of Skills & Knowledge","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"cagr-half-life-of-skills-knowledge","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 12:41:21","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 12:41:21","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17980","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17570,"post_author":"10","post_date":"2020-11-23 18:23:20","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-23 12:53:20","post_content":"\n

In the last couple of weeks, I had some long phone conversations with a few of my old buddies. I had not spoken to them in several months. The COVID situation was helping to connect with many through video calls rather than just messages on social media. One of them works for a large engineering services organization. Two others are in R&D organizations. One thing that struck me was everybody was referring to one project or the other they were working on (in their workplace of course). So you might ask \"so what is the issue?\"<\/em><\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Project approach is most common<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Within most IT and R&D organization, people are used to being \u201cassigned\u201d to projects. Once they finish one a project, they move on to another. An engineer typically fills up a resume with major projects completed and contributions made. Strong project management practices have evolved to closely monitor individual tasks and resources (engineers and other materials). Project managers manage risks that could impact project completion and thereby its objectives. Funding is done for projects based on resources (both people and material). But, projects by definition are temporary in nature and this can drive thinking and decision making. Once Projects get closed most of the learnings too get wrapped up. So is there a better way to organize?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Transition from Project thinking to Product Thinking<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

As part of Lean-Agile transformation,<\/strong> one of the foundation principles we convey is Product Thinking <\/strong>and Long-term Stable Teams.<\/strong> A department and in turn a larger organization should ideally be an aggregation of carefully designed teams each with a manageable size of members having requisite skills. Product thinking is about slices of customer value rather than set of project work<\/em><\/strong> packages. Product work gets assigned to teams as opposed to an individual getting assigned work. All work is then accomplished collectively by the members as one team<\/strong>. Product by nature lasts longer till it loses its utility value. So long-term stable teams and product thinking will allow members to be invested in their team identity, evolve team norms and practices and become high performing over a period of time. Customer value gets delivered over a longer period of time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continuous Improvement<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Once there is a long-term mindset, it enables Continuous Improvement<\/strong>, which is the next foundation element of Lean-Agile thinking. The teams will be able to develop a systematic understanding of the current state of performance indicators. They get time to carefully think of any improvements and can implement the same so that performance remains stable and also can improve. They can set standards and practices to ensure stability. It is difficult to imagine how this can happen in a temporary project setup where the key objective is to finish a project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Talk to us if you are wondering how Lean-Agile transformation can change Projects based organization? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

#ProjectToProduct, #ProductThinking, #OrganizeAroundValue, #ContinuousImprovement, #LongtermStableTeams<\/p>\n","post_title":"Lean-Agile in Projects Organization \u2013 is it oil in water?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"17570-2","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 13:08:07","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 13:08:07","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17570","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":2},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 2 of 2 1 2
\n

Note*: The Technologies named have respective trademarks and the numbers in the table shown are for discussion purposes only.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Scroll down for the proposed Solution !<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suggested <\/span>Solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the actions that could be taken look like below: <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Technologies and Skills Associated<\/strong><\/td>CAGR*<\/strong><\/td>Half-Life*<\/strong><\/td>Recommended Actions<\/strong><\/td><\/tr>
Company Proprietary Protocol  <\/td>-10%<\/td>2 years<\/td>Immediately Re-Skill engineers in this team with one other technology with a higher CAGR<\/td><\/tr>
NFC  <\/td>5%<\/td>3 years<\/td>Start discussions on Re-Skilling engineers in this team  <\/td><\/tr>
ZigBee  <\/td>2%<\/td>2 years<\/td>Gradually Re-Skill engineers in this team with one other technology with a higher CAGR  <\/td><\/tr>
Bluetooth  <\/td>15%<\/td>3 years<\/td>Build more capacity and capability in this area by re-skilling other team members  <\/td><\/tr>
WiFi  <\/td>5%<\/td>4 years<\/td>Build more capacity and capability in this area by re-skilling other team members  <\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Note*: The Technologies named have respective trademarks and the numbers in the table shown are for discussion purposes only.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is one other action which Srinivas should immediately take:
Re-Organize his Agile Teams with a better mix
of engineers with different technology skills. Engineers in each of the teams will
have T-Shaped skills rather than one specialization. This way the teams and
hence members are better prepared for adaptation to emerging technologies<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW # 230 - How to deal with Half-Life of Skills?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-230-how-to-deal-with-half-life-of-skills","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 13:07:30","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 13:07:30","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17985","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17980,"post_author":"10","post_date":"2021-01-13 09:43:04","post_date_gmt":"2021-01-13 04:13:04","post_content":"\n

Recently I had a chance to be on a panel discussion on the theme of Digital Transformation<\/strong>. As we were discussing, one our panel members mentioned about \u201cHalf-Life\u201d of Skills <\/strong>in today\u2019s fast-paced technology world. It aroused my curiosity as I thought that it is an interesting concept to apply for Skills. We did a bit of research on this and found several extremely interesting articles. We want to tie two ideas here one related to Growth<\/strong> through the concept of Compounded Annual Growth Rate (CAGR)<\/strong> and the other related to Decay<\/strong> using the concept of Half-Life<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How does it apply to Engineering Organizations?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

CAGR of Skills<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

An engineer or a manager possesses many skills and knowledge to perform on the job. These are dependent upon the technology and industry domain. Normally most engineers are used to seeing Growth<\/strong> in their skills. There is an assumption that Value always increases<\/strong>, hence relatable to CAGR. It is a commonly used term in business to denote the growth of any phenomenon. Examples could be for revenue, unit sales or number of users. The number indicates the constant rate of growth that would take a starting value to an ending value over a particular duration. For the purposes of this article, we use CAGR to capture past data, though it can also be used for forecasts. Over a period of an engineer's work life, due to experience and application, certain skills and knowledge grow in utility value<\/strong>. Every individual wishes to grow this utility value at a high rate. An individual's investment on honing the same determines the growth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Half-Life of Skills<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Now let us look at Decay. Half-Life<\/strong> was originally used in Nuclear Physics, which is the time required for a quantity to reduce to half of its initial value. The term describes how quickly unstable atoms undergo radioactive decay or how long stable atoms survive (https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Half-life). However, for our purpose, we can generalize this concept to describe any phenomenon where \u201cOver what duration a utility value or worth decreases by Half\u201d<\/strong>. Contrary to what an engineer wishes, Skills and Knowledge also Decay over time. Most often the market and industry conditions determines this decay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Variety of Skills<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

We can apply this phenomenon to any of the skills and knowledge. Usage of certain tools, skills in specific technologies, practices like critical thinking, problem solving, communication, best practices & lessons learnt, industry or domain specific nuances or transfer learning from one domain to another are all good examples of skill and knowledge. Some Emotional Quotient (EQ) related competencies can also qualify for this category. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We then can categorize these skills and knowledge and put side by side the CAGR and an estimate their Half-Life. The utility value diminishes on account of obsolescence or disruptions in the domain with entry of new ones. While one might have a spent long time in accumulating certain skills, they might lose their significance over a short period of time due to lack of application. What used to be Half-life of 5-6 years for technologies and skills earlier in many domains have now reduced to as low as 2-3 years. This is especially true for digital transformation technologies. In simple terms many skills can lose their value and become obsolete in much shorter durations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How can one use both the above ideas at an individual level? <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

We propose that it is very important to view Skills and Knowledge from both the perspectives of past CAGR and Half-Life which is in the future. As an engineer one can start by capturing the Portfolio of Skills and Knowledge<\/strong> that one possesses. Then one can do an analysis and develop a good understanding on which skills and knowledge in this portfolio. One also needs to be aware of which of the skills have accumulated value<\/strong> and have grown at a good rate. A particular skill or an industry specific knowledge can dramatically accumulate value when there is a surge in demand. More so some game changer ideas or technology<\/strong> can create such a surge. For example, in Digital Transformation<\/strong> - Smartphone apps led services, Smart Devices, Social Media led engagement, Cloud Enablement, Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to name a few.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the other hand, many skills are likely to erode in utility value<\/strong> as quantified by Half-Life<\/strong>. The half-life period would be a good point for a decision, to drop the skill from the portfolio sometime soon and potentially replace with another skill. This is irrespective of the time that has taken to accumulate the same. The half-life is generally determined by the rapidity of changes in that technology or industry domain. This may also be dependent upon the speed of changes and strategies pursued within a particular company. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is the implication for Organizations? <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

First it is about Enterprise Agility<\/strong> and how people are organized in terms of Agile Teams to adapt to the changes and continuously deliver customer value. Within teams, there is a need to have people with T-Shaped Skills<\/strong>. Each team member not only have deep skills in one or two areas but also have broad complementary skills to the extent practical \u2013 Portfolio of Skills<\/strong>. The leadership and management in organizations have to help team members in managing this portfolio and track both Half-Life <\/strong>and CAGR<\/strong>. The portfolio would also apply at the team and organization level. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then it is incumbent on leadership to continuously<\/strong> make investments on growing skills and knowledge <\/strong>and prune the eroding ones<\/strong>. At the same time, an individual has to embrace life-long learning to actively manage the portfolio. Some individuals might end up having a non-performing portfolio whereas some others may build a high-performing portfolio. A combined high-performing portfolio of Skills would benefit individuals, teams and organizations.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CAGR & Half-Life of Skills & Knowledge","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"cagr-half-life-of-skills-knowledge","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 12:41:21","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 12:41:21","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17980","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17570,"post_author":"10","post_date":"2020-11-23 18:23:20","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-23 12:53:20","post_content":"\n

In the last couple of weeks, I had some long phone conversations with a few of my old buddies. I had not spoken to them in several months. The COVID situation was helping to connect with many through video calls rather than just messages on social media. One of them works for a large engineering services organization. Two others are in R&D organizations. One thing that struck me was everybody was referring to one project or the other they were working on (in their workplace of course). So you might ask \"so what is the issue?\"<\/em><\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Project approach is most common<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Within most IT and R&D organization, people are used to being \u201cassigned\u201d to projects. Once they finish one a project, they move on to another. An engineer typically fills up a resume with major projects completed and contributions made. Strong project management practices have evolved to closely monitor individual tasks and resources (engineers and other materials). Project managers manage risks that could impact project completion and thereby its objectives. Funding is done for projects based on resources (both people and material). But, projects by definition are temporary in nature and this can drive thinking and decision making. Once Projects get closed most of the learnings too get wrapped up. So is there a better way to organize?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Transition from Project thinking to Product Thinking<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

As part of Lean-Agile transformation,<\/strong> one of the foundation principles we convey is Product Thinking <\/strong>and Long-term Stable Teams.<\/strong> A department and in turn a larger organization should ideally be an aggregation of carefully designed teams each with a manageable size of members having requisite skills. Product thinking is about slices of customer value rather than set of project work<\/em><\/strong> packages. Product work gets assigned to teams as opposed to an individual getting assigned work. All work is then accomplished collectively by the members as one team<\/strong>. Product by nature lasts longer till it loses its utility value. So long-term stable teams and product thinking will allow members to be invested in their team identity, evolve team norms and practices and become high performing over a period of time. Customer value gets delivered over a longer period of time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continuous Improvement<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Once there is a long-term mindset, it enables Continuous Improvement<\/strong>, which is the next foundation element of Lean-Agile thinking. The teams will be able to develop a systematic understanding of the current state of performance indicators. They get time to carefully think of any improvements and can implement the same so that performance remains stable and also can improve. They can set standards and practices to ensure stability. It is difficult to imagine how this can happen in a temporary project setup where the key objective is to finish a project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Talk to us if you are wondering how Lean-Agile transformation can change Projects based organization? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

#ProjectToProduct, #ProductThinking, #OrganizeAroundValue, #ContinuousImprovement, #LongtermStableTeams<\/p>\n","post_title":"Lean-Agile in Projects Organization \u2013 is it oil in water?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"17570-2","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 13:08:07","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 13:08:07","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17570","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":2},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 2 of 2 1 2
\n

 Hint: you can read our blog to get some ideas: https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/blog\/cagr-half-life-of-skills-knowledge\/<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Note*: The Technologies named have respective trademarks and the numbers in the table shown are for discussion purposes only.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Scroll down for the proposed Solution !<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suggested <\/span>Solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the actions that could be taken look like below: <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Technologies and Skills Associated<\/strong><\/td>CAGR*<\/strong><\/td>Half-Life*<\/strong><\/td>Recommended Actions<\/strong><\/td><\/tr>
Company Proprietary Protocol  <\/td>-10%<\/td>2 years<\/td>Immediately Re-Skill engineers in this team with one other technology with a higher CAGR<\/td><\/tr>
NFC  <\/td>5%<\/td>3 years<\/td>Start discussions on Re-Skilling engineers in this team  <\/td><\/tr>
ZigBee  <\/td>2%<\/td>2 years<\/td>Gradually Re-Skill engineers in this team with one other technology with a higher CAGR  <\/td><\/tr>
Bluetooth  <\/td>15%<\/td>3 years<\/td>Build more capacity and capability in this area by re-skilling other team members  <\/td><\/tr>
WiFi  <\/td>5%<\/td>4 years<\/td>Build more capacity and capability in this area by re-skilling other team members  <\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Note*: The Technologies named have respective trademarks and the numbers in the table shown are for discussion purposes only.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is one other action which Srinivas should immediately take:
Re-Organize his Agile Teams with a better mix
of engineers with different technology skills. Engineers in each of the teams will
have T-Shaped skills rather than one specialization. This way the teams and
hence members are better prepared for adaptation to emerging technologies<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW # 230 - How to deal with Half-Life of Skills?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-230-how-to-deal-with-half-life-of-skills","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 13:07:30","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 13:07:30","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17985","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17980,"post_author":"10","post_date":"2021-01-13 09:43:04","post_date_gmt":"2021-01-13 04:13:04","post_content":"\n

Recently I had a chance to be on a panel discussion on the theme of Digital Transformation<\/strong>. As we were discussing, one our panel members mentioned about \u201cHalf-Life\u201d of Skills <\/strong>in today\u2019s fast-paced technology world. It aroused my curiosity as I thought that it is an interesting concept to apply for Skills. We did a bit of research on this and found several extremely interesting articles. We want to tie two ideas here one related to Growth<\/strong> through the concept of Compounded Annual Growth Rate (CAGR)<\/strong> and the other related to Decay<\/strong> using the concept of Half-Life<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How does it apply to Engineering Organizations?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

CAGR of Skills<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

An engineer or a manager possesses many skills and knowledge to perform on the job. These are dependent upon the technology and industry domain. Normally most engineers are used to seeing Growth<\/strong> in their skills. There is an assumption that Value always increases<\/strong>, hence relatable to CAGR. It is a commonly used term in business to denote the growth of any phenomenon. Examples could be for revenue, unit sales or number of users. The number indicates the constant rate of growth that would take a starting value to an ending value over a particular duration. For the purposes of this article, we use CAGR to capture past data, though it can also be used for forecasts. Over a period of an engineer's work life, due to experience and application, certain skills and knowledge grow in utility value<\/strong>. Every individual wishes to grow this utility value at a high rate. An individual's investment on honing the same determines the growth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Half-Life of Skills<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Now let us look at Decay. Half-Life<\/strong> was originally used in Nuclear Physics, which is the time required for a quantity to reduce to half of its initial value. The term describes how quickly unstable atoms undergo radioactive decay or how long stable atoms survive (https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Half-life). However, for our purpose, we can generalize this concept to describe any phenomenon where \u201cOver what duration a utility value or worth decreases by Half\u201d<\/strong>. Contrary to what an engineer wishes, Skills and Knowledge also Decay over time. Most often the market and industry conditions determines this decay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Variety of Skills<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

We can apply this phenomenon to any of the skills and knowledge. Usage of certain tools, skills in specific technologies, practices like critical thinking, problem solving, communication, best practices & lessons learnt, industry or domain specific nuances or transfer learning from one domain to another are all good examples of skill and knowledge. Some Emotional Quotient (EQ) related competencies can also qualify for this category. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We then can categorize these skills and knowledge and put side by side the CAGR and an estimate their Half-Life. The utility value diminishes on account of obsolescence or disruptions in the domain with entry of new ones. While one might have a spent long time in accumulating certain skills, they might lose their significance over a short period of time due to lack of application. What used to be Half-life of 5-6 years for technologies and skills earlier in many domains have now reduced to as low as 2-3 years. This is especially true for digital transformation technologies. In simple terms many skills can lose their value and become obsolete in much shorter durations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How can one use both the above ideas at an individual level? <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

We propose that it is very important to view Skills and Knowledge from both the perspectives of past CAGR and Half-Life which is in the future. As an engineer one can start by capturing the Portfolio of Skills and Knowledge<\/strong> that one possesses. Then one can do an analysis and develop a good understanding on which skills and knowledge in this portfolio. One also needs to be aware of which of the skills have accumulated value<\/strong> and have grown at a good rate. A particular skill or an industry specific knowledge can dramatically accumulate value when there is a surge in demand. More so some game changer ideas or technology<\/strong> can create such a surge. For example, in Digital Transformation<\/strong> - Smartphone apps led services, Smart Devices, Social Media led engagement, Cloud Enablement, Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to name a few.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the other hand, many skills are likely to erode in utility value<\/strong> as quantified by Half-Life<\/strong>. The half-life period would be a good point for a decision, to drop the skill from the portfolio sometime soon and potentially replace with another skill. This is irrespective of the time that has taken to accumulate the same. The half-life is generally determined by the rapidity of changes in that technology or industry domain. This may also be dependent upon the speed of changes and strategies pursued within a particular company. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is the implication for Organizations? <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

First it is about Enterprise Agility<\/strong> and how people are organized in terms of Agile Teams to adapt to the changes and continuously deliver customer value. Within teams, there is a need to have people with T-Shaped Skills<\/strong>. Each team member not only have deep skills in one or two areas but also have broad complementary skills to the extent practical \u2013 Portfolio of Skills<\/strong>. The leadership and management in organizations have to help team members in managing this portfolio and track both Half-Life <\/strong>and CAGR<\/strong>. The portfolio would also apply at the team and organization level. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then it is incumbent on leadership to continuously<\/strong> make investments on growing skills and knowledge <\/strong>and prune the eroding ones<\/strong>. At the same time, an individual has to embrace life-long learning to actively manage the portfolio. Some individuals might end up having a non-performing portfolio whereas some others may build a high-performing portfolio. A combined high-performing portfolio of Skills would benefit individuals, teams and organizations.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CAGR & Half-Life of Skills & Knowledge","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"cagr-half-life-of-skills-knowledge","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 12:41:21","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 12:41:21","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17980","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17570,"post_author":"10","post_date":"2020-11-23 18:23:20","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-23 12:53:20","post_content":"\n

In the last couple of weeks, I had some long phone conversations with a few of my old buddies. I had not spoken to them in several months. The COVID situation was helping to connect with many through video calls rather than just messages on social media. One of them works for a large engineering services organization. Two others are in R&D organizations. One thing that struck me was everybody was referring to one project or the other they were working on (in their workplace of course). So you might ask \"so what is the issue?\"<\/em><\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Project approach is most common<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Within most IT and R&D organization, people are used to being \u201cassigned\u201d to projects. Once they finish one a project, they move on to another. An engineer typically fills up a resume with major projects completed and contributions made. Strong project management practices have evolved to closely monitor individual tasks and resources (engineers and other materials). Project managers manage risks that could impact project completion and thereby its objectives. Funding is done for projects based on resources (both people and material). But, projects by definition are temporary in nature and this can drive thinking and decision making. Once Projects get closed most of the learnings too get wrapped up. So is there a better way to organize?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Transition from Project thinking to Product Thinking<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

As part of Lean-Agile transformation,<\/strong> one of the foundation principles we convey is Product Thinking <\/strong>and Long-term Stable Teams.<\/strong> A department and in turn a larger organization should ideally be an aggregation of carefully designed teams each with a manageable size of members having requisite skills. Product thinking is about slices of customer value rather than set of project work<\/em><\/strong> packages. Product work gets assigned to teams as opposed to an individual getting assigned work. All work is then accomplished collectively by the members as one team<\/strong>. Product by nature lasts longer till it loses its utility value. So long-term stable teams and product thinking will allow members to be invested in their team identity, evolve team norms and practices and become high performing over a period of time. Customer value gets delivered over a longer period of time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continuous Improvement<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Once there is a long-term mindset, it enables Continuous Improvement<\/strong>, which is the next foundation element of Lean-Agile thinking. The teams will be able to develop a systematic understanding of the current state of performance indicators. They get time to carefully think of any improvements and can implement the same so that performance remains stable and also can improve. They can set standards and practices to ensure stability. It is difficult to imagine how this can happen in a temporary project setup where the key objective is to finish a project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Talk to us if you are wondering how Lean-Agile transformation can change Projects based organization? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

#ProjectToProduct, #ProductThinking, #OrganizeAroundValue, #ContinuousImprovement, #LongtermStableTeams<\/p>\n","post_title":"Lean-Agile in Projects Organization \u2013 is it oil in water?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"17570-2","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 13:08:07","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 13:08:07","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17570","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":2},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 2 of 2 1 2
\n

 We have helped Srinivas to draw up the portfolio of his Department\u2019s Skills & Knowledge. Now, can you help him with what actions he could take?<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Hint: you can read our blog to get some ideas: https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/blog\/cagr-half-life-of-skills-knowledge\/<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Note*: The Technologies named have respective trademarks and the numbers in the table shown are for discussion purposes only.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Scroll down for the proposed Solution !<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suggested <\/span>Solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the actions that could be taken look like below: <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Technologies and Skills Associated<\/strong><\/td>CAGR*<\/strong><\/td>Half-Life*<\/strong><\/td>Recommended Actions<\/strong><\/td><\/tr>
Company Proprietary Protocol  <\/td>-10%<\/td>2 years<\/td>Immediately Re-Skill engineers in this team with one other technology with a higher CAGR<\/td><\/tr>
NFC  <\/td>5%<\/td>3 years<\/td>Start discussions on Re-Skilling engineers in this team  <\/td><\/tr>
ZigBee  <\/td>2%<\/td>2 years<\/td>Gradually Re-Skill engineers in this team with one other technology with a higher CAGR  <\/td><\/tr>
Bluetooth  <\/td>15%<\/td>3 years<\/td>Build more capacity and capability in this area by re-skilling other team members  <\/td><\/tr>
WiFi  <\/td>5%<\/td>4 years<\/td>Build more capacity and capability in this area by re-skilling other team members  <\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Note*: The Technologies named have respective trademarks and the numbers in the table shown are for discussion purposes only.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is one other action which Srinivas should immediately take:
Re-Organize his Agile Teams with a better mix
of engineers with different technology skills. Engineers in each of the teams will
have T-Shaped skills rather than one specialization. This way the teams and
hence members are better prepared for adaptation to emerging technologies<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW # 230 - How to deal with Half-Life of Skills?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-230-how-to-deal-with-half-life-of-skills","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 13:07:30","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 13:07:30","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17985","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17980,"post_author":"10","post_date":"2021-01-13 09:43:04","post_date_gmt":"2021-01-13 04:13:04","post_content":"\n

Recently I had a chance to be on a panel discussion on the theme of Digital Transformation<\/strong>. As we were discussing, one our panel members mentioned about \u201cHalf-Life\u201d of Skills <\/strong>in today\u2019s fast-paced technology world. It aroused my curiosity as I thought that it is an interesting concept to apply for Skills. We did a bit of research on this and found several extremely interesting articles. We want to tie two ideas here one related to Growth<\/strong> through the concept of Compounded Annual Growth Rate (CAGR)<\/strong> and the other related to Decay<\/strong> using the concept of Half-Life<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How does it apply to Engineering Organizations?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

CAGR of Skills<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

An engineer or a manager possesses many skills and knowledge to perform on the job. These are dependent upon the technology and industry domain. Normally most engineers are used to seeing Growth<\/strong> in their skills. There is an assumption that Value always increases<\/strong>, hence relatable to CAGR. It is a commonly used term in business to denote the growth of any phenomenon. Examples could be for revenue, unit sales or number of users. The number indicates the constant rate of growth that would take a starting value to an ending value over a particular duration. For the purposes of this article, we use CAGR to capture past data, though it can also be used for forecasts. Over a period of an engineer's work life, due to experience and application, certain skills and knowledge grow in utility value<\/strong>. Every individual wishes to grow this utility value at a high rate. An individual's investment on honing the same determines the growth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Half-Life of Skills<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Now let us look at Decay. Half-Life<\/strong> was originally used in Nuclear Physics, which is the time required for a quantity to reduce to half of its initial value. The term describes how quickly unstable atoms undergo radioactive decay or how long stable atoms survive (https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Half-life). However, for our purpose, we can generalize this concept to describe any phenomenon where \u201cOver what duration a utility value or worth decreases by Half\u201d<\/strong>. Contrary to what an engineer wishes, Skills and Knowledge also Decay over time. Most often the market and industry conditions determines this decay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Variety of Skills<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

We can apply this phenomenon to any of the skills and knowledge. Usage of certain tools, skills in specific technologies, practices like critical thinking, problem solving, communication, best practices & lessons learnt, industry or domain specific nuances or transfer learning from one domain to another are all good examples of skill and knowledge. Some Emotional Quotient (EQ) related competencies can also qualify for this category. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We then can categorize these skills and knowledge and put side by side the CAGR and an estimate their Half-Life. The utility value diminishes on account of obsolescence or disruptions in the domain with entry of new ones. While one might have a spent long time in accumulating certain skills, they might lose their significance over a short period of time due to lack of application. What used to be Half-life of 5-6 years for technologies and skills earlier in many domains have now reduced to as low as 2-3 years. This is especially true for digital transformation technologies. In simple terms many skills can lose their value and become obsolete in much shorter durations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How can one use both the above ideas at an individual level? <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

We propose that it is very important to view Skills and Knowledge from both the perspectives of past CAGR and Half-Life which is in the future. As an engineer one can start by capturing the Portfolio of Skills and Knowledge<\/strong> that one possesses. Then one can do an analysis and develop a good understanding on which skills and knowledge in this portfolio. One also needs to be aware of which of the skills have accumulated value<\/strong> and have grown at a good rate. A particular skill or an industry specific knowledge can dramatically accumulate value when there is a surge in demand. More so some game changer ideas or technology<\/strong> can create such a surge. For example, in Digital Transformation<\/strong> - Smartphone apps led services, Smart Devices, Social Media led engagement, Cloud Enablement, Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to name a few.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the other hand, many skills are likely to erode in utility value<\/strong> as quantified by Half-Life<\/strong>. The half-life period would be a good point for a decision, to drop the skill from the portfolio sometime soon and potentially replace with another skill. This is irrespective of the time that has taken to accumulate the same. The half-life is generally determined by the rapidity of changes in that technology or industry domain. This may also be dependent upon the speed of changes and strategies pursued within a particular company. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is the implication for Organizations? <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

First it is about Enterprise Agility<\/strong> and how people are organized in terms of Agile Teams to adapt to the changes and continuously deliver customer value. Within teams, there is a need to have people with T-Shaped Skills<\/strong>. Each team member not only have deep skills in one or two areas but also have broad complementary skills to the extent practical \u2013 Portfolio of Skills<\/strong>. The leadership and management in organizations have to help team members in managing this portfolio and track both Half-Life <\/strong>and CAGR<\/strong>. The portfolio would also apply at the team and organization level. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then it is incumbent on leadership to continuously<\/strong> make investments on growing skills and knowledge <\/strong>and prune the eroding ones<\/strong>. At the same time, an individual has to embrace life-long learning to actively manage the portfolio. Some individuals might end up having a non-performing portfolio whereas some others may build a high-performing portfolio. A combined high-performing portfolio of Skills would benefit individuals, teams and organizations.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CAGR & Half-Life of Skills & Knowledge","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"cagr-half-life-of-skills-knowledge","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 12:41:21","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 12:41:21","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17980","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17570,"post_author":"10","post_date":"2020-11-23 18:23:20","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-23 12:53:20","post_content":"\n

In the last couple of weeks, I had some long phone conversations with a few of my old buddies. I had not spoken to them in several months. The COVID situation was helping to connect with many through video calls rather than just messages on social media. One of them works for a large engineering services organization. Two others are in R&D organizations. One thing that struck me was everybody was referring to one project or the other they were working on (in their workplace of course). So you might ask \"so what is the issue?\"<\/em><\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Project approach is most common<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Within most IT and R&D organization, people are used to being \u201cassigned\u201d to projects. Once they finish one a project, they move on to another. An engineer typically fills up a resume with major projects completed and contributions made. Strong project management practices have evolved to closely monitor individual tasks and resources (engineers and other materials). Project managers manage risks that could impact project completion and thereby its objectives. Funding is done for projects based on resources (both people and material). But, projects by definition are temporary in nature and this can drive thinking and decision making. Once Projects get closed most of the learnings too get wrapped up. So is there a better way to organize?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Transition from Project thinking to Product Thinking<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

As part of Lean-Agile transformation,<\/strong> one of the foundation principles we convey is Product Thinking <\/strong>and Long-term Stable Teams.<\/strong> A department and in turn a larger organization should ideally be an aggregation of carefully designed teams each with a manageable size of members having requisite skills. Product thinking is about slices of customer value rather than set of project work<\/em><\/strong> packages. Product work gets assigned to teams as opposed to an individual getting assigned work. All work is then accomplished collectively by the members as one team<\/strong>. Product by nature lasts longer till it loses its utility value. So long-term stable teams and product thinking will allow members to be invested in their team identity, evolve team norms and practices and become high performing over a period of time. Customer value gets delivered over a longer period of time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continuous Improvement<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Once there is a long-term mindset, it enables Continuous Improvement<\/strong>, which is the next foundation element of Lean-Agile thinking. The teams will be able to develop a systematic understanding of the current state of performance indicators. They get time to carefully think of any improvements and can implement the same so that performance remains stable and also can improve. They can set standards and practices to ensure stability. It is difficult to imagine how this can happen in a temporary project setup where the key objective is to finish a project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Talk to us if you are wondering how Lean-Agile transformation can change Projects based organization? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

#ProjectToProduct, #ProductThinking, #OrganizeAroundValue, #ContinuousImprovement, #LongtermStableTeams<\/p>\n","post_title":"Lean-Agile in Projects Organization \u2013 is it oil in water?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"17570-2","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 13:08:07","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 13:08:07","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17570","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":2},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 2 of 2 1 2
\n

Srinivas is a manager in a Global Competence Center (GCC) and has a department of around 40 engineers. The GCC works on several Smart Devices and Connected Products. His department provides features within these Products related to wireless technologies. Srinivas has organized his people into 5 Agile Teams. One agile team is comprising of very experienced engineers who have been with the company for long and are having deep knowledge on their company proprietary communication protocol. At least 30% of their Products still work on these protocols. The second agile team works on Near-Field Communication (NFC) technologies. Likewise, the remaining agile teams work on ZigBee, Bluetooth and 802.11 (WiFi) respectively. Currently they are working on a proof-of-concept in the product with WiFi capability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 We have helped Srinivas to draw up the portfolio of his Department\u2019s Skills & Knowledge. Now, can you help him with what actions he could take?<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Hint: you can read our blog to get some ideas: https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/blog\/cagr-half-life-of-skills-knowledge\/<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Note*: The Technologies named have respective trademarks and the numbers in the table shown are for discussion purposes only.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Scroll down for the proposed Solution !<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suggested <\/span>Solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the actions that could be taken look like below: <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Technologies and Skills Associated<\/strong><\/td>CAGR*<\/strong><\/td>Half-Life*<\/strong><\/td>Recommended Actions<\/strong><\/td><\/tr>
Company Proprietary Protocol  <\/td>-10%<\/td>2 years<\/td>Immediately Re-Skill engineers in this team with one other technology with a higher CAGR<\/td><\/tr>
NFC  <\/td>5%<\/td>3 years<\/td>Start discussions on Re-Skilling engineers in this team  <\/td><\/tr>
ZigBee  <\/td>2%<\/td>2 years<\/td>Gradually Re-Skill engineers in this team with one other technology with a higher CAGR  <\/td><\/tr>
Bluetooth  <\/td>15%<\/td>3 years<\/td>Build more capacity and capability in this area by re-skilling other team members  <\/td><\/tr>
WiFi  <\/td>5%<\/td>4 years<\/td>Build more capacity and capability in this area by re-skilling other team members  <\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Note*: The Technologies named have respective trademarks and the numbers in the table shown are for discussion purposes only.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is one other action which Srinivas should immediately take:
Re-Organize his Agile Teams with a better mix
of engineers with different technology skills. Engineers in each of the teams will
have T-Shaped skills rather than one specialization. This way the teams and
hence members are better prepared for adaptation to emerging technologies<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW # 230 - How to deal with Half-Life of Skills?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-230-how-to-deal-with-half-life-of-skills","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 13:07:30","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 13:07:30","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17985","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17980,"post_author":"10","post_date":"2021-01-13 09:43:04","post_date_gmt":"2021-01-13 04:13:04","post_content":"\n

Recently I had a chance to be on a panel discussion on the theme of Digital Transformation<\/strong>. As we were discussing, one our panel members mentioned about \u201cHalf-Life\u201d of Skills <\/strong>in today\u2019s fast-paced technology world. It aroused my curiosity as I thought that it is an interesting concept to apply for Skills. We did a bit of research on this and found several extremely interesting articles. We want to tie two ideas here one related to Growth<\/strong> through the concept of Compounded Annual Growth Rate (CAGR)<\/strong> and the other related to Decay<\/strong> using the concept of Half-Life<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How does it apply to Engineering Organizations?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

CAGR of Skills<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

An engineer or a manager possesses many skills and knowledge to perform on the job. These are dependent upon the technology and industry domain. Normally most engineers are used to seeing Growth<\/strong> in their skills. There is an assumption that Value always increases<\/strong>, hence relatable to CAGR. It is a commonly used term in business to denote the growth of any phenomenon. Examples could be for revenue, unit sales or number of users. The number indicates the constant rate of growth that would take a starting value to an ending value over a particular duration. For the purposes of this article, we use CAGR to capture past data, though it can also be used for forecasts. Over a period of an engineer's work life, due to experience and application, certain skills and knowledge grow in utility value<\/strong>. Every individual wishes to grow this utility value at a high rate. An individual's investment on honing the same determines the growth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Half-Life of Skills<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Now let us look at Decay. Half-Life<\/strong> was originally used in Nuclear Physics, which is the time required for a quantity to reduce to half of its initial value. The term describes how quickly unstable atoms undergo radioactive decay or how long stable atoms survive (https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Half-life). However, for our purpose, we can generalize this concept to describe any phenomenon where \u201cOver what duration a utility value or worth decreases by Half\u201d<\/strong>. Contrary to what an engineer wishes, Skills and Knowledge also Decay over time. Most often the market and industry conditions determines this decay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Variety of Skills<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

We can apply this phenomenon to any of the skills and knowledge. Usage of certain tools, skills in specific technologies, practices like critical thinking, problem solving, communication, best practices & lessons learnt, industry or domain specific nuances or transfer learning from one domain to another are all good examples of skill and knowledge. Some Emotional Quotient (EQ) related competencies can also qualify for this category. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We then can categorize these skills and knowledge and put side by side the CAGR and an estimate their Half-Life. The utility value diminishes on account of obsolescence or disruptions in the domain with entry of new ones. While one might have a spent long time in accumulating certain skills, they might lose their significance over a short period of time due to lack of application. What used to be Half-life of 5-6 years for technologies and skills earlier in many domains have now reduced to as low as 2-3 years. This is especially true for digital transformation technologies. In simple terms many skills can lose their value and become obsolete in much shorter durations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How can one use both the above ideas at an individual level? <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

We propose that it is very important to view Skills and Knowledge from both the perspectives of past CAGR and Half-Life which is in the future. As an engineer one can start by capturing the Portfolio of Skills and Knowledge<\/strong> that one possesses. Then one can do an analysis and develop a good understanding on which skills and knowledge in this portfolio. One also needs to be aware of which of the skills have accumulated value<\/strong> and have grown at a good rate. A particular skill or an industry specific knowledge can dramatically accumulate value when there is a surge in demand. More so some game changer ideas or technology<\/strong> can create such a surge. For example, in Digital Transformation<\/strong> - Smartphone apps led services, Smart Devices, Social Media led engagement, Cloud Enablement, Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to name a few.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the other hand, many skills are likely to erode in utility value<\/strong> as quantified by Half-Life<\/strong>. The half-life period would be a good point for a decision, to drop the skill from the portfolio sometime soon and potentially replace with another skill. This is irrespective of the time that has taken to accumulate the same. The half-life is generally determined by the rapidity of changes in that technology or industry domain. This may also be dependent upon the speed of changes and strategies pursued within a particular company. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is the implication for Organizations? <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

First it is about Enterprise Agility<\/strong> and how people are organized in terms of Agile Teams to adapt to the changes and continuously deliver customer value. Within teams, there is a need to have people with T-Shaped Skills<\/strong>. Each team member not only have deep skills in one or two areas but also have broad complementary skills to the extent practical \u2013 Portfolio of Skills<\/strong>. The leadership and management in organizations have to help team members in managing this portfolio and track both Half-Life <\/strong>and CAGR<\/strong>. The portfolio would also apply at the team and organization level. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then it is incumbent on leadership to continuously<\/strong> make investments on growing skills and knowledge <\/strong>and prune the eroding ones<\/strong>. At the same time, an individual has to embrace life-long learning to actively manage the portfolio. Some individuals might end up having a non-performing portfolio whereas some others may build a high-performing portfolio. A combined high-performing portfolio of Skills would benefit individuals, teams and organizations.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CAGR & Half-Life of Skills & Knowledge","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"cagr-half-life-of-skills-knowledge","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 12:41:21","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 12:41:21","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17980","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17570,"post_author":"10","post_date":"2020-11-23 18:23:20","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-23 12:53:20","post_content":"\n

In the last couple of weeks, I had some long phone conversations with a few of my old buddies. I had not spoken to them in several months. The COVID situation was helping to connect with many through video calls rather than just messages on social media. One of them works for a large engineering services organization. Two others are in R&D organizations. One thing that struck me was everybody was referring to one project or the other they were working on (in their workplace of course). So you might ask \"so what is the issue?\"<\/em><\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Project approach is most common<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Within most IT and R&D organization, people are used to being \u201cassigned\u201d to projects. Once they finish one a project, they move on to another. An engineer typically fills up a resume with major projects completed and contributions made. Strong project management practices have evolved to closely monitor individual tasks and resources (engineers and other materials). Project managers manage risks that could impact project completion and thereby its objectives. Funding is done for projects based on resources (both people and material). But, projects by definition are temporary in nature and this can drive thinking and decision making. Once Projects get closed most of the learnings too get wrapped up. So is there a better way to organize?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Transition from Project thinking to Product Thinking<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

As part of Lean-Agile transformation,<\/strong> one of the foundation principles we convey is Product Thinking <\/strong>and Long-term Stable Teams.<\/strong> A department and in turn a larger organization should ideally be an aggregation of carefully designed teams each with a manageable size of members having requisite skills. Product thinking is about slices of customer value rather than set of project work<\/em><\/strong> packages. Product work gets assigned to teams as opposed to an individual getting assigned work. All work is then accomplished collectively by the members as one team<\/strong>. Product by nature lasts longer till it loses its utility value. So long-term stable teams and product thinking will allow members to be invested in their team identity, evolve team norms and practices and become high performing over a period of time. Customer value gets delivered over a longer period of time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continuous Improvement<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Once there is a long-term mindset, it enables Continuous Improvement<\/strong>, which is the next foundation element of Lean-Agile thinking. The teams will be able to develop a systematic understanding of the current state of performance indicators. They get time to carefully think of any improvements and can implement the same so that performance remains stable and also can improve. They can set standards and practices to ensure stability. It is difficult to imagine how this can happen in a temporary project setup where the key objective is to finish a project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Talk to us if you are wondering how Lean-Agile transformation can change Projects based organization? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

#ProjectToProduct, #ProductThinking, #OrganizeAroundValue, #ContinuousImprovement, #LongtermStableTeams<\/p>\n","post_title":"Lean-Agile in Projects Organization \u2013 is it oil in water?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"17570-2","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-23 13:08:07","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-23 13:08:07","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17570","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":2},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 2 of 2 1 2

Dr. Krishna Prasad

Page 2 of 2 1 2